S3 E61: Jenni Kowal on Self Care for Multipassionate Creatives + Embracing the Process
I was so excited to chat with Jenni Kowal, a multi passionate, visual artist and personal development coach specializing in self care and creative exploration. Founder of Anytime Creative, she offers a variety of life coaching services, including mindfulness support. Her flagship product is the Self Care Adventure Cards - an intuitive card deck that sparks inspiration for every step of your self care journey. Her mission is to help scattered and multi-passionate creatives use self care to fuel their creative expression, get out of their own way and spend more time in flow!
Tune in to hear us talk about how self compassion and intuition are essential to the creative process, thinking of creativity as life force, how to use self care to help you build up that life force, to fill your cup as your energy and life situation evolves, how Jenni balances her many interests as a multipassionate artist, and makes space for reflection.
I hope you love this conversation as much as I did!
TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
Creativity as life force
Why we creatives need to protect our own energy
What showing up for your art can look like
Ways that Jenni uses to help her clients to move through creative blocks
Why we should embrace practicing and preparing for creativity
Giving ourselves permission to fail
How Jenni balances her many passions and chooses based on what feels sustainable
How “filling the cup” self-compassionately helps us avoid burnout and replenish our creative life force
Jenni’s favorite mindfulness and reflection practices
Jenni’s Self Care Adventure Card deck and favorite self care practices
RESOURCES MENTIONED
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
The Moon is My Calendar (sign up for her email list to get the journal pages free each moon cycle)
MORE FROM REBECCA
Sign up for the free Feel Good Creativity Unchallenge (5 days of super easy creativity + wellness prompts)
Compassionate Creativity Coworking Club
Subscribe to Creative Wellness Letters (my biweekly newsletter, full of motivation and encouragement)
Free Discovery Call - learn more about coaching
Fuel Your Creative Work With Compassionate Productivity workbook
SUBSCRIBE + REVIEW
TRANSCRIPT
Rebecca Hass 0:05
Hello and welcome to being a whole person Podcast. I'm Rebecca Hass, a pianist, composer and creative wellness coach and my job is to help you self compassionately grow your creative practice from a supportive foundation of wellness. This podcast features honest conversations, resources, inspiration, and tangible tips to help you cultivate more balance and ease in your working life. Follow through on your goals without constant hustle, and also feel like a whole person in the process. I'm so glad you're here.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 61 of Being A Whole Person. I am excited to be back with a new laptop. Unfortunately, my old one had a hardware problem that was not worth fixing for a seven year old computer, but it is nice to have a shiny new machine that works way better than my old one did. So, thank you for your patience with this episode coming out. I am so excited to share this conversation today with Jenni Kowal. But first, I have a couple announcements.
Number one, I'm changing things up with my coaching offerings a little bit. My birthday is coming up, so it feels like my own personal New Year, and it feels like a great time to kind of revamp things a little bit. First off, my one month coaching packages are going away. I've found that it's much more impactful for people to do three months, or even longer-term work, because this is the type of work that takes time.
I'm still going to have one-time sessions for those of you who want to pack a lot into a little amount of time and kind of be self directed after getting some support from me. Those three month packages are going to change so that they are a bit more intensive, with every week meetings instead of every other week, so that you can really get the most growth out of our time spent together. That of course means that the price will be going up, since there's now more included. So, that change is going to take place in mid-May. You have until May 20 to get in touch with me if you want to do a 1-month package, or if you want to do the old version of the 3-month package. There's going to be all the details in the show notes for that stuff, so you don't need to remember everything that I just said.
Second announcement: I hinted at this a little bit last week. There is going to be a new way to work with me in a community setting. If you've been around for a while, you've probably heard me talk about Compassionate Creativity Coworking Club, and that's not going anywhere. But now it is all under the umbrella of Compassionate Creativity Club. You can continue to join at the coworking level or the coworking plus coaching level, which are not going to change at all, and now there's another, lower, level that is the Community level. So if you want to join together and get some encouragement from a creative coach (myself) and other fellow creatives who are doing their best to carve out the time to do the projects they want to be doing, you can join us!
There's a Discord community where you can communicate with people, a monthly creator lab call, where we get to have a little "show and tell" of whatever you're working on, whether it's finished or not, or especially if it's not finished. Because often we wait until things are finished to share them, which is understandable, but this will be a safe place to share how things are going in progress, and get some feedback if you want to, but really just show up and have people encourage you, which I think is so invaluable. Of course, if you can't make it to that call, you can submit something and it will be recorded and you can get the feedback and cheers and watch them later.
You will also get access to my resource library full of helpful worksheets for fueling your energy so that you are able to create what you want to be doing. As I mentioned last week, the mini episodes of this podcast will now be housed within this community. So, next week will be also a regular episode, and then the week after that, that mini episode is going to show up in the community.
I'm also going to be sharing there a lot about my creative process since I've been committing to a season of creation, and reconnecting with myself as a composer. I'm really excited to just share what's going on in real time, and what's difficult, what's going well, just the raw, here's what's going on right now. I'll have an update either in audio or video form for you once or twice a week to show you what I'm working on there. So, this is all really exciting. It's not open as this comes out, but by next episode, next week, May 6, it will all be ready for you, so, get excited! I'm getting excited.
My last announcement is my usual plug to please rate and review the show. It really does help for an independent podcaster such as myself, to get those ratings, get that algorithm food, and help more people find this work, so that we can all make more stuff and put it out in the world. Everybody wins.
Thank you for listening to my preamble here. I'm going to tell you a little bit about Jenny Kowal. I first met Jenny virtually, in the Wandering Aimfully community, which we are both a part of. Wandering Aimfully is "unboring business coaching" and it is so so wonderful. I could go on about nice things about that, but that's where we connected. I found that our work has so many parallels. We both are creative coaches who focus on self care, and I just knew that I had to meet her and interview her for the podcast.
Jenni Kowal is a multipassionate visual artist and personal development coach specializing in self care and creative exploration. She's the founder of Anytime Creative and offers a variety of life coaching services, including mindfulness support. She also has created the Self Care Adventure Cards, which we talked about a little bit in the episode. I just got a deck myself about a month ago, and they are so wonderful, really well made, well thought out, and tons of great ideas for self care, so that you can be playful with it, be curious about it. It is an intuitive card deck that sparks inspiration for every step of your self care journey.
Jenni's mission is to help scattered and multipassionate creatives, such as yourself, use self care, to fuel their creative expression, get out of their own way, and spend more time in creative flow. I love all of this. I'm guessing if you have been listening and you like my work, you will love Jenni as well.
We talk about self compassion and intuition and how they are essential to the creative process, how to use self care to help you build up that lifeforce that is your creativity, how to fill up your cup as your energy is always evolving, and Jenni shares about how she balances her many interests as a multipassionate artist, and leaves space for reflection and being a whole person in the process. I hope you love this conversation as much as I did, without further ado, here it is.
So today, I'm thrilled to welcome Jenni Kowal to the podcast. Hey, Jenni, welcome!
Jenni Kowal 7:34
Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Rebecca Hass 7:36
I'm so glad you're here. Can we just start by you telling everyone what you do, whatever that means? That can be a long answer or a short one.
Jenni Kowal 7:48
Absolutely. I am a creative guide, which is kind of like a creative coach or life coach all wrapped into the idea that I believe creativity is our lifeforce. And using that energy throughout our lives can just help create, you know, the best possible outcomes for us. So, a little bit of my background is that I'm a photographer and graphic designer. Lately, it's just been more of following whatever excites me and kind of helping people get their projects done or find their creative passions and let that be okay, too.
Really wanting to bring to the surface that there's no guilty pleasures. There's nothing wrong with doing exactly what lights you up. So I'm just here to spread more of that message. And I live in Nashville, Tennessee, and I just love crafting and I love walking around the block and seeing what excites me and inspires me, and lately, I've just been working on creating more self care products.
Rebecca Hass 8:54
That is also awesome. The listeners did not hear us chatting before we hit "record", that we have so much in common that we know this conversations going to be like, "Oh, that's awesome," all the time. I love that you use the word guide, instead of coach, or maybe in conjunction with coach, because I think that's kind of like the best of the description of a coach. When people think about coaching and they think, "I need someone to tell me what to do," and that's not really what coaching is, it's more like you're there to support and like help the other person come to their conclusions.
Jenni Kowal 9:27
Exactly. Yeah, I don't mind the word coach, but it's kind of, it's become so big in the industry right now that, as a guide, I feel like my main call is like providing resources because I love collecting them and you know, sometimes I find something exciting that might not be for me, and then I talk to someone who's looking for that exact thing I just found, whether it's a website or a book. Those are the types of things I feel like a guide would do is like, really help you move along whether you're hiking or learning something.
So I just I think, as a whole, it's just become really finding what feels right for me, and then just sharing that with the world. Then hopefully that inspires other people to, you know, find their own definition, too.
Rebecca Hass 10:12
Yeah, there's a lot of nurturing wrapped up in the word guide, too. I feel that energy from it.
Jenni Kowal 10:17
Yeah.
Rebecca Hass 10:17
I also love how you describe creativity as a part of our life force. How did you come to that specific description? Or like, how has your idea of creativity evolved over the years?
Jenni Kowal 10:31
Yeah, I think creativity always felt kind of external, like, as this thing that was happening, you know, around us. But, just growing up as a creative kid wanting to play with chalk outside and paint things and really just testing the waters with whatever I could, it kind of slowly morphed into, you know, actually having a medium like photography or design. And then what I realized was that it wasn't always the final product that lit me up, it was the process. So an example would be just driving to a small town walking around with my camera. I would maybe never look at those photos, again, or ever, like maybe for months, and it was just about the day, having that new way of looking at the world. And the same with graphic design.
It's like, you're constantly trying to solve problems, and it can be very taxing. But if I actually was taking creativity, as more of like, this energetic exchange with the world around me, it became a lot easier to understand that, we are all creatives, and we're all solving problems every day. And to refuel ourselves with self care, which is a lot of my message, too, it just, it all ties back together that it's like we have this energy source to tap into, but we have to nurture it and, and realize that sometimes the creative process can be very draining. And it can also be very filling. So it's a kind of wild oxymoron.
But just understanding your cycles, your needs, will help, I think, you understand what lights you up, what, what keeps you motivated. And then if you are a creative, like trying to actually make things for the world, there's different types of creatives, I would say. But overall, I think, like, you just need to protect your energy at the end of the day, and try to turn off some of the noise to to help you reconnect back with yourself.
Rebecca Hass 12:31
Yeah, and I love that you're saying there's so many different kinds of creativity, because I truly believe that, too, that everyone is creative, even if they don't know it. If it's something creative that you're doing, either like solving problems, or maybe it's in some realm that you don't view as like, "high art", and it's cooking, or whatever it is, and yeah, I hope everyone can take that to heart. I think people listening to this probably already identify as creative in some way. But I love just spreading the message that we all are.
I like that you touched on the fact that sometimes creativity is draining, because it can really be romanticized, in so many pop culture narratives and all this kind of stuff. And yeah, it can be hard and it can be draining, and people feel like they're doing it wrong. Sometimes if it's hard, if they're like, it must be this, I am just smiling in a sunny place while painting and how do you work with people when they are running into "this is hard, and I didn't expect it to be hard." What's an example? I know, everyone's different.
Jenni Kowal 13:44
Yeah, like, I mean, creative blocks can come in all forms. And with like, having trouble, I've been having trouble with my niche. Like, I want to call myself anti-niche right now, because I'm not helping a specific person, like, "Oh, you're a painter, I'm gonna help you build your painting career." Like, that's not exactly what I do. I kind of look at it as before you even pick up the brush, before you start writing, what what are the things you need to do for yourself to get in the flow? They call it making an appointment with the Muses or showing up with the Muses, which does put creativity outside of ourselves, but it's up to you to show up.
So I think when people are feeling stuck, and it's really hard if you don't build that language with yourself to realize that you might be feeling resistance towards, you know, showing up and making sales, and asking for the sale, or you're resistant to show up at all just to show that you exist online. I think creative blocks are a lot of ego and there's certain practices to kind of get past that.
So some of the modalities I like to use are hypnosis, EFT, tapping, really doing some deeper meditation and visualization, because you kind of have all the answers inside of yourself. So it's just finding ways to tap into them. And that is why self care has become such a big part of my creative guide coaching career because it's like, you know, you're not going to go onto a football field and play a full game of football unless you've actually practiced and learned and done the work.
So I see it as, you know, as a creative actually doing the work to help yourself get there is so important. And for me, I didn't really make that connection until a few years ago, where I was like, I'm burning out, I have no ideas, like I'm not taking care of myself. And then once I started to allow time to rest, and recharge, and like, do the fun things that were not necessarily for work, but still creative, like not trying to make my hobbies monetized in some capacity. So it's like, really the blocks and the stuckness, they all start from within you. But you also have the power to work through them.
But sometimes you either might need to hire someone or work with a group or do a lot of deep shadow work, you know, journaling, and stuff like that. So I don't know if this answers your question fully, but in a roundabout way, it's just noticing when you start to feel a block. If it's in your body, or, you know, what part of your body it's in, and how that could be connected to like a past experience, or, you know, just these fears that crop up and like trying to really identify them, and then becoming a boss and crushing them as you go.
Rebecca Hass 16:50
I love that answer. It was an incredibly broad question, and I feel like you answered better than I would have. I love that you mentioned the football game, and that you wouldn't expect to just show up and play and never having done it before. And that practice is part of it. We don't get to be or need to be really good immediately at anything, even though pretty much all adults I've ever worked with in any capacity - we don't like being "bad at things," using air quotes, like feeling like we don't know what we're doing or anything like that.
So there's so much trust involved in the creative process in general. And especially when you're working through some kind of block, like, it's really hard to trust that you're going to make it through it because you can't see it. There's something in your way.
Jenni Kowal 17:40
Yeah, they're invisible, it's hard.
Rebecca Hass 17:43
Yeah, yeah. I always like making the athletic comparison. Also, probably because I'm a musician, and we are athletes of just really small muscles, like playing the piano, like, I'm working my finger, not my entire body. But the other thing that I was thinking while you said that is, you wouldn't expect to show up and do a good job if you didn't stretch first, or warm up your muscles, or whatever it is. And I think sometimes we think, we just, we don't even think about it. But we think we need to bypass that when it comes to these more mental activities. And we can get warmed up that way too.
Jenni Kowal 18:23
Yeah, and I think the comparison, it's like, it's good, and it's bad, because we want to be, like you said, we want to be good. We want to show up and do our best. But I also want to throw in, what about the football game in your backyard on Thanksgiving, like it can be fun, it can be like, "Oh, it can be silly," and it doesn't have to be, "Oh, I'm the best."
It's just about having fun and playing which, which is I think where some people might be afraid to start a new medium because they're like, I" have no idea how to cross stitch, but it looks so fun." And then they get frustrated after an hour and throw it out. Where if you really think about the process and how it can help you, like, "Oh, this will be a great way to really relax and unwind at the end of the day. It'll keep me kind of motivated and focus versus scrolling social media," or something, like having that hobby that helps your brain to and knowing that you don't have to be perfect right away. And you can't expect to be perfect ever.
But knowing that you can really just show up for yourself. Like I said, you can either have fun with it, you can hone your skills, you can kind of pick and choose what that will end up being like, and it doesn't always have to be like the, you know, Picasso version of it. It's just yours. So, you know, it's it's all about the process.
Rebecca Hass 19:41
Yeah, there's so much permission giving involved in starting something new. We have to give ourselves permission to, I'm gonna say "fail," that's a strong word, but when we're having emotions about it, that's how it feels. It feels like failing, our brains might bring it to this high level of "this is a threat If I don't do well at this, this is a huge problem," and brains do that. Brains over inflate things that might be threats all the time. So do you have specific ways that you talk about giving permission to yourself to start something new or be messy with it?
Jenni Kowal 20:19
I think for me personally, like I get, you know, if I'm scrolling TikTok and getting all these ideas, inspiration, I definitely save them to my phone, and then probably never look at them. And I get overwhelmed, and I'm like, then I do nothing. So I check in with myself there, I try to unplug as much as I can. And there's always a double edged sword with social media like, "Oh, it's so wonderful, I can connect, and also learn everything I could ever want, but then feel like nothing's actually sticking."
So if I start to feel that way, and I'm noticing where my passions are going, it's really like noticing if things keep coming up, like the same things, then that's when I'll start to say, "Hey, like you really took an interest in wanting to learn this. Why don't you either go take a Skillshare class or see if, you know, see where you can find this information in a more, you know, thought out way versus like a thirty second video. And sit with that feeling too, because there's a lot of excitement when it comes to taking on a new project or a new medium. I like to get messy, and I like to also follow things that have more depth to it.
Like, one of my friends teaches like a releasing perfectionism workshop where we're drawing and cutting, collaging, and cutting things up and pasting things, and we're doing sort of emotional work with it too. And in that process, it's like not, it's just about the process, it's not about the final piece. And it's digging more into the subconscious that way. So I always love to look for different ways to stretch my creativity. That might be like, in a longer meditation or writing a meditation, or doing something different.
And overall, though, I just try not to load my plate too high, because I know I shut down. And to give myself permission, it's just noticing that maybe it's not for me, and I can let it go and that's fine. Or if it keeps coming up, being like, "Okay, this is the sign. I'm going to start and try. And if I don't like it, it doesn't have to stick around forever, either."
Rebecca Hass 22:34
I know the multi passionate overwhelm so well. There's so many exciting things out there to try and learn about. And obviously, as a resource collector, you love learning, I feel the exact same way, like sometimes my friends have remarked on the fact that every time we hang out, they go home with a new resource, like a podcast to listen to, or an article to read, because I just can't stop collecting things and sharing them.
And yeah, it is really tricky to try and figure out what things you actually have space for in your life and how much attention you can devote to them. Do you kind of measure it by that too? Like how much, like how deep you want to go with a certain thing? Is there any sort of calculation that goes on? Like, okay, I have my, you know, "I'm a creative guide, I'm doing that work, I'm doing design work, those things take up a lot of attention. Then I'm starting this new hobby,nd this is like, a low level." It's probably not that calculated, but I'm just wondering.
Jenni Kowal 23:34
Yeah, I think for me, it's a daily check in like, there's no, I can look at my week, and I can get really excited and plan it out, and then like only a quarter of the things ever happen. And I don't really plan that far in advance. So when it comes to like, you know, my day, and today I loaded up all my calls on a Tuesday, so that means the rest of my week, I can really go with the flow on what what feels right at the time. But when it does get to be in those stressy moments, I just have to focus on getting those things off my plate and then maybe that night, I'm not doing anything productive. It's just like, you're watching a movie. So there's really no measurement.
But I figure if I don't set the intention, like at the beginning of the week, sort of say, "Oh, Saturday, it would be great to go to the park and have a picnic or something," like, I'll just kind of forget about it, even if I really want to do it, which is kind of why I created the self care adventure cards, which we haven't talked about quite yet. But the idea that I can kind of use oracle cards to inspire me to remind me of what I like to do, and then if it feels right at the time, I'll do it.
But sometimes when I plan ahead, that's when things never, they don't actually happen because I feel like they become a chore at that point. So it's a weird tricky balance between my brain trying to do things, and then my body's like, "Well, I don't have the energy," and then it's always back and forth. But yeah, it's not calculated.
Rebecca Hass 25:06
Yeah, I don't think it is for most of us, but just wondering how you approach that. It sounds like you're very intuitively led, and intuition doesn't really like planning, in my experience.
Jenni Kowal 25:18
Nope. Yeah, I'm all about gut feelings and vibes and all of that, because, the example right now is that we went couch shopping, and I probably spent, you know, at least like six hours online researching, and then a couple hours walking around all the stores. And I just was like, "I don't know what's going to be right until I know," and then we were driving by one place to revisit, I was like, "Let's go revisit it." And we found the right couch that I already like, kind of starred, and it felt really right. I was like, "Let's just do this," and it took that pressure off my plate, because otherwise I'd just be sitting around for another three weeks worrying about it.
And it can be that way with all parts of life where it's just easier to make a decision. Like, even if it's not, like, quote, unquote, "the right decision." You can always figure it out later, but in life, it's like, you're never truly going to know until you take that next step to see what's going to happen next. You can't think 10 steps down the line, but you can think one step down the line.
Rebecca Hass 26:22
That's such a recurring lesson for me. It's so appealing for my brain, because anxiety is part of it, like, anxious brains want to plan everything out, because safety is imperative. And if I know 10 steps out, my brain's like, "Yeah, we've got this." And of course, that's not how life works, like you just said. But then I think those moments when I can just say, "I'll just know when it's right," that can be so freeing, and allows my brain to just calm a little bit and say, "Alright, I don't have to be responsible right now." I can just like, put my feet up, as if brains have feet, but, you know, that sort of idea.
I love tapping into intuition, too, when I'm taking walks. You kind of mentioned this, when you're talking about taking an adventure for photography. Sometimes my partner will ask me, "Where's your walk taking you today?" And I'm like, "I don't know," because I walk out the door, and I just look one way, look the other way, and think, "Okay, which way do I feel drawn to?" because I walk around my neighborhood every single day. There aren't that many choices that I have, but there still are all these little minute choices as it goes, and that's so much more exciting.
Jenni Kowal 27:35
I love that. And every day, you can set like a different intention, like "Oh, today, I'm going to notice all the leaves on the trees, and tomorrow, look for all the yellow fences," like you can kind of trick your brain into looking for new things that you never noticed. That could be even in your own house. Like, think of all the things that you're like, "Oh, I never really observed this. And the more we can observe what's around us, the more, I don't know, it just makes me feel like I have a sense of the world in a better place."
Rebecca Hass 28:03
Yeah, and you feel like you really belong to the place, too, like, that's why I love walking so much. I love having a daily walk, it's a self care practice for so many reasons. But I know, I moved to this neighborhood last summer, and the first thing I wanted to do was just start walking around to see what I noticed. If I was making a map for someone else of my neighborhood, they probably want to know like, where are the good restaurants, and, you know, what's that park that you like to go to?
But in my mental map, I'm like, "Okay, that's the house where the three kittens are usually sitting outside, and that's the house with all the chickens. And that's the place with this cool wind chime outside, or that's where that one cat lives." That's my mental map, and what really is fun for me about walking around. It's just these tiny little things, but yeah, it makes me feel more present in my life.
Jenni Kowal 28:53
That's so fun. I used to live in Philly. So I'd had the same kind of ideas where I would go whichever way and there was a lot to look at with with all the city houses, and there would always be that one cat in the window that would be so excited to see. It just, it makes you feel like you know, even in this world where sometimes you feel separate from the people in it, especially as an introvert, like I'm not talking to everyone I see. But it just makes me feel like oh, I had a little slice of their life, and I saw how they, you know, lived, a little bit, in their window and then it, you know, brings us together in some weird way.
Rebecca Hass 29:26
Yeah, well, and during the pandemic, too. I think that has been a huge thing for me to feel like, "Okay, I'm not really like going a lot of places, but I am having this rich experience in my environment, that's not just inside my house.
Jenni Kowal 29:40
Yeah, it's so important to get out, I agree.
Rebecca Hass 29:43
Yeah, that was limiting. So, going back to the self care adventure cards, you just touched on that really briefly, please tell everyone what they are, because I just got my set, literally last night before we talked, and I love them.
Jenni Kowal 29:56
Oh yeah. I would love to hear your experience right off the bat, but I will share what they are. So it's a card deck like an oracle deck, but kind of like a to do deck if you want to say. So there's over 150 self care prompts there, and they're all divided into five areas. I kind of created these, like five areas of self care to make self care feel less overwhelming. So there's Revitalize, Nourish, Express, Connect and Reflect, and they all have little color codes and icons. There's some bookmarks, there's a little wood block, that says "I am enough," so that you can put your card in the wood block each day as as you have done it, or you're going to do it later, as a reminder. There's also a card cloth that you can use as like, an oracle cloth to pull the cards or wrap them up and take them on the go.
So this card deck was just kind of made out of necessity to give myself a fun way to do self care, because it was literally all the things I love to do. It can be an oracle deck in the way that some of the prompts are kind of more obscure, like, "go the distance" could literally mean like go for a long walk, or it could mean ask your boss for a raise. It could be interpreted however you want. I also included journal prompts in there as well, because I think that's a very important part of self care. If we pull a card we don't like, we're gonna be like, "I don't want to do that today," and that's okay, and you don't have to question it.
Then you find one that you do like, and some people use it very randomly, or you could also pull them out all open in your hand and pick one for the day. But essentially, it's just to help you reduce the energy it takes to do the self care things that you need to refuel you. This deck, like I said, made from my heart, but passing it along to others has been so wonderful to see how other people are using them. So I would love to hear what your first initial thoughts when you got them were?
Rebecca Hass 32:01
Yeah, well, I just opened it at 10pm when I got home from rehearsal last night, and just kind of like flipped through all of them. But as I was saying, you before we hit record, I love that it's not just one idea on the card, I love that there are bullet points for each thing. Because like you said, "go the distance" can mean a lot of things. We're both talking a lot about people who are overwhelmed and feeling burned out. You don't have a lot of mental space to really figure out self care when you're burned out. So maybe those bullet point ideas are a lifesaver, because you see something on there, and it's like, oh, yeah, that's it.
I love that you have multiple ideas, it really appeals to both my very logical brain and my intuitive brain because you have the categories and the different, you know, Nourish, etc. and then you have the journal prompts. So if I'm like, "I really need reflection today," I can go straight to that, but then if I don't know what to do, I can just shuffle and pick randomly. So that spontaneous intuitive side can be fed, too.
I'll give you more feedback once I use them more, of course, but like, I'm thrilled by all the possibilities that I see. And just the packaging, and the accessories, it's all so beautiful. So everyone should check them out, we'll put it in the show notes.
Jenni Kowal 33:16
Thank you. Yeah, I think, I was like, "Oh, I could just make a card deck, it could just be this, but I love accessories too." And I want it to feel more like a self care kit, like this is, you can take this anywhere, and most of the prompts are like free, or you can probably do them in your home. But, you know, made within a pandemic, so I kept that in mind. But also, you know, I thought about making add-ons where you could, you know, invite a friend to do it with you, or, you know, like, roll a dice and it would give you like sort of this gamification. So maybe down the line, I'll have different versions of this, but for now, I have a guide book that tells you all the ways you can use it.
Some people literally could pull one card a day for 62 days, and then they start over, or like you said, you can pick a category for that day, because a lot of what I've been intuitively doing is, what category do I need right now? So not even, what do I need to do in in practice, but, you know, if I'm feeling kind of sluggish, I'm like maybe I need to revitalize and clean up the house a little bit and get like some energy moving. Or if I'm really tired, and I need to just nourish myself with a nice cup of tea or take a bath.
So that builds that self care mindset and having more language to talk about your needs is what I believe helps me a lot, and I think having this for other people too. It's just just building more mental strength, so that what you said, too, like you're burnt out, you don't know what to do, but oh, I have these things that can help me, these little guideposts, and what's better than a little deck to help you?
Rebecca Hass 34:53
Yeah. It's amazing. I like that you mentioned that we need to name our feeling because I think that's a step that often gets forgotten in the process of taking care of yourself. Because, like we just said, you're busy or overwhelmed, you might not have access to all of what you're thinking and feeling, and just putting a name to it to say and have that awareness - "Oh, I'm feeling a little bit like scattered and jittery today." And then that really is going to inform what you're going to look for next, versus I can't handle life today, you know, and I don't know what that is.
I always start my self care workshops with journal prompts, and the first one is, how are you feeling right now? You don't need to do something about it. You just need to name it. And I think that's such an important practice. I also have this practice of asking myself, "What do I need today?" each morning, which I learned from Mara Glatzel, who I'm wondering if you know about, because...
Jenni Kowal 35:52
No!
Rebecca Hass 35:52
I just feel like, oh, boy, you should know about her. I talk about her all the time on the podcast. And people who are listening for a long time are like, oh, yeah, her again. But she has a podcast called needy, she talks all about needs and meeting your needs, and living in a way that makes you more aware. There's kind of some seasonal living elements wrapped up in it, she has this year-long program called Cycle that I did a few years ago, where there were seasonal retreats for this kind of thing, and there were some elements of planning involved, like, you could do that, but it was all about just kind of tapping into your needs.
When I discovered her work was very much when I needed help with that. I was in a deep state of burnout, and I took her class on rest. And I just like, took the class, watched the videos, didn't do anything about it, and proceeded to be the most burned out that I had been in my life. I always tell that story and kind of laugh about it, because it's such a common story.
Jenni Kowal 36:54
Yeah, it's funny that you like sought it out, and you know, it's sometimes hard to take in a lot of new information when we are in that state, too. So building the small routines each day is just going to help pad you when it happens. I was in therapy for like three years, and currently taking a little break, because I feel like I had a lot of the tools already. I was like, "Okay, let me test this on my own."
I just think back to, one of the biggest things is, okay, we all have this well, or the self care cup. We talk about filling the cup, and some days like your cup is overflowing, you're feeling great, like everything is just bonus. Some days, it's like, okay, it needs a little bit. Other days, it's like this huge deep hole that nothing will add to it. So you took a bath, you journaled, you slept, you took a nap, you talked it out with a therapist, and it's just not filling up, because you might just be in that deep state of burnout, and all these things have led to that place.
So I just think of it as like, the more you can try to just keep it a balanced state and really check in with yourself daily, you might still burn out. But you'll have a lot more of that padding of that, like you know the cup's half full today, and it's not going to feel as hard. So knowing that you're doing the best you can every day is also another thing that we talked about, like your best today is going to look different than your best tomorrow, and our energy shifts and changes.
So we talked about cycles really quickly, like the idea of the cycle as a way of thinking, we are going to go through that. And having the language into our bodies, coded in there, when we're feeling at our better places is really going to help us when we're not at our best, and it can keep us afloat, at least, so we can get back out of that hole.
Rebecca Hass 38:44
Yeah, acknowledging that my energy is always changing was probably the most annoying and also liberating discovery. Because it's like, I can't just predict it, like, it's not true. So I'm glad to know it's not true, but it's like, oh, yeah, being a human, it's kind of inconvenient.
Jenni Kowal 39:05
It's hard, but we do our best like I said.
Rebecca Hass 39:09
And when you're saying "the cup," I just thought about taking that metaphor even further. Like, there might be a hole in your cup. Why is there a hole in your cup? What do I need to do to fix the cup? There's so many levels to that.
Jenni Kowal 39:23
Yeah, and it's a lot of self compassion, like it's understanding and compassion and not berating yourself or feeling guilty for taking that time, and I think it's the habits that are within us, like we're so used to, you know, whether we're taking care of other people or family, we don't know how to exist on our own sometimes.
So, you know, this is your permission slip if you're hearing this, to just understand that people will still love you and take care of you if you maybe ask for a night away or something like that. It helps you become the better person and other people will be inspired by you as well, I think.
Rebecca Hass 40:02
Definitely. The putting on your oxygen mask cliché is a cliché for a reason. I always say, we can't possibly support other people if we're not supporting ourselves enough, and yeah, that might look selfish on the surface to think about yourself first. But if you're worried about being selfish, you're probably not being selfish. It's kind of my guideline for people.
Jenni Kowal 40:24
Yeah.
Rebecca Hass 40:25
And I love that you're mentioning self compassion. Everyone listening can't see me. But I was sort of turning to a bobble head when you were saying self compassion as part of it. Because, yeah, it, especially people who are recovering perfectionists, which I definitely identify as, it's so easy to put these unrealistic expectations on self care and think, "I have to do it right. And now I'm doing it wrong." And then there's this whole other realm in which you're maybe beating yourself up over not doing something right. So yes, yes to that permission slip and all the self compassion.
Jenni Kowal 41:00
Yeah, that kind of brings me back to when you were talking about anxiety and planning, like 10 steps ahead. I've struggled with that for years and I'm finally at a way better place and can manage my anxiety a lot better, and it doesn't come up every day. And I used to be a planner, where I would like spend hours on Airbnb trying to find the perfect place for us to stay at and now it's like, I don't want to do that, because my time is more precious, and I want to enjoy the time there. So that's where the intuition comes in.
So it's kind of like, instead of feeling like, oh, it has to be perfect, I have to have this and this and this, and it's like, letting go of whatever the expectation is. And then trusting my gut with like, maybe three options. I'm like, "This looks good. Okay, it's done." Now my time is like, much more safe. So I'm trying not to be over-analytical anymore. But realizing how much anxiety could connect to that, I'm literally just making that connection now of feeling like I need to be in control.
Once I could get get over it and understand, you know, how anxiety was trying to protect me, but now it's okay, it can take a back seat, like I'm okay without it, I can let it go, and it's safe. So now, life just kind of feels more impulsive, which is different. But it's actually a little bit better to just let it go, to just understand that it's okay to let it go, and it's safe to let it go.
Rebecca Hass 42:26
Yeah, that was such a revelation for me when I started to link the control and the planning as a low level anxiety symptom. And as I started to frame everything as safety versus not safety, and I don't mean like physical safety, but like, does your brain perceive it as safe? You know, is there a risk involved of any kind, and we know our brains don't necessarily perceive that in an accurate way. But your brain is trying to make you survive, right, and so sometimes, if I'm upset about something that feels, I don't know, if I'm feeling anxious about going to some event that I haven't been to before, and my brain is just a little like, "Ooh, I don't know. I'm not excited about that," and I'm like, "Oh, yeah, okay. Thanks, brain. You're trying to take care of me. This is unfamiliar, but I think we're gonna be okay." Just having that awareness has been such a game changer. It's not always easy to access every single day, but yeah.
Jenni Kowal 43:25
Yeah, I think, to that point, I saw some quote, it was like, "You're not starting from scratch, you're starting from experience." So if you can take that into every situation, it's like, okay, you've been to an event before. You know that they have bathrooms, you know, that they have concessions, you're going to find them. Because usually, for me, it's like, what if I need a snack? What if I have to go the bathroom? Where's the exit?
So knowing that, I can usually find that information and be fine, or ask someone versus like freaking out about it beforehand, because I'm, you know, feeling like it's out of my comfort zone. It's obviously been a while since I've done anything like out of my comfort zone in those regards. So just knowing that you've been through this before, in some capacity, it's just gonna look a little different. And apply that to everything in your life, and you'll get to where you need to go.
Rebecca Hass 44:16
Yeah, there's a lot of wrangling and tending involved in brains. The brain: can't live with it, can't live without it.
Jenni Kowal 44:28
Exactly.
Rebecca Hass 44:30
So, total pivot for a second, we were talking about reflection before and I want to go back to reflection practices. You were kind of talking about having a daily check in with yourself, but can you share a little more about some of your regular reflection practices?
Jenni Kowal 44:46
Yeah, so, for me, when I'm doing morning pages, which is just like three pages in my notebook, inspired by Julia Cameron of The Artists Way - she's like the god godmother of creativity. She, I saw her, it was live, but she was virtual, and the way that she could hold space for people even over Zoom was amazing and powerful. And I was like, "I love you," and it inspired me to get back into morning pages a couple of months ago. That just helps me clear the clutter out of my head as I wake up and know that I can start the day fresh.
Those morning pages can be literally whatever, it doesn't have to have a prompt. Sometimes I might get inspired by a prompt, but I'm generally good at just releasing it. And I love reflection as a passive thing where I'm looking at the past and just, like I said, letting go, or as the future like the, you know, how do I want things to look or feel? Or how do I want to have this launch go? Or what does that look like? And the more I can attune to the future self, which is very big in the coaching world right now. It's like how do you want to feel when you get this thing.
So I like to use journaling and kind of meditation for that purpose as as a future reflection and connection with myself. And, you know, if, if like I'm in some sort of program or something and there's journal prompts, like I'm very much like, I love when other people hold space for journaling. So I try to include that in my programs too, is because I don't always do it on my own. But if I'm in a space where it's safe to do so, I love to just let it go.
I think we should all have, like, you know, at least like an hour a week where we just unplug and just write and, you know, gather all the journal prompts that we might have found on Instagram or Pinterest or the self care cards, and just see where it takes you. You could always answer a different, like have the same question, but have a different answer each time. And that's what's so cool, because we're just always in evolution.
Rebecca Hass 46:52
Mm hmm. Cool. Yeah. Thanks for sharing all that. You're inspiring me to look back at the morning pages. I've done it during different periods of my life and never made it a long term habit, but it was helpful for me when I was doing it. I hear you on not journaling all the time, too. It's something that I would love to have as a daily practice, and I've always really struggled to make it this rock solid daily thing. There's a term that Emily Thompson from Being Boss used, that she's an "SOS journaler" - she only journals when there's a big problem, and that's fine, however it works for people is great.
But yeah, having that regular practice of it, I think, is really nice. Hang on, I do it almost daily, in a very small way. I just realized I'm not giving myself credit for something I'm actually doing and saying I should be doing more. But there's this moon journal called The Moon is My Calendar that I've been using for a few years. And there's a space to just do a mini journal of what was today like, and you kind of track your feelings and you can track physical sensations, you can track your menstrual cycle and your sleep cycle, and like whatever you want to track on the little wheel thing, but in the little box for each day, I'm mini journaling every day, just a little bit.
Jenni Kowal 48:10
That's perfect, because you can always look back and see which cycle affected you in that time. I've always wanted to keep up with that too. I tried on my iPad for a while, but I realized it has to be on paper, like I don't want to have the digital at night sometimes. So yeah, there's that. I'm like, "Okay, well, I forgot my journal somewhere, and I have to like wait a month to get it back."
So I think there's always the times where I don't have it on me, but I think I try to do some sort of self expression in every day, like whether that is cooking for me. It feels like, you know, it's just an expressive activity and it's creative. And just so I'm not like consuming all day, like that's my kind of trade off, is I don't have to write every day, but you know some way, whether it's like telling a friend something or doing a podcast, like just having expression being part of your process. And it doesn't have to be journaling, because it's not for everyone, either.
Rebecca Hass 49:05
Yeah, absolutely. It's so true that it might not feel right one day, and the next day it might, and yeah, whatever you need to do is okay, I think we're on the same page, love it. So I like to ask people about self care practices. I know you have hundreds of ideas, because they're in the cards, so I'm not going to ask you what your favorites are of all time, but just what your favorites are right now.
Jenni Kowal 49:34
So I just moved, so it's been kind of hard to practice self care in the normal sense, but I think right now it's just been keeping my phone in the other room at night, that's important to set a boundary, and not checking it first thing. And taking baths, I have a new bathtub so I'm getting used to that. We used to have a nice garden tub in our apartment, so it was like, nice and big. But now it's like, okay, I'll take a bath. Overall it's not as nice, but it'll do, and I don't know, maybe one day we'll get a clawfoot.
But so yeah, mainly, it's been more in like the decorating and creativity self care for me, like, I picked up some craft supplies to decorate for Easter and my boyfriend was like, "Why do you care about decorating for Easter?" I was like, "If I make the art, if I make the decoration, I care," like, I don't need to go buy anything, but I wanted to practice with painting and just doing fun things that will get me inspired to do more. So I think that's kind of where, when I have this new space to live in, I want to make it my own. Self care to me is like making this space like, supportive for those activities.
And it has been quite exhausting. I'll tell you that. Like, I took a nap for like the first time in a while just because my brain is like constantly thinking about the space and the furniture and like how I want to decorate it, but I got away. And so it's very exhausting. But overall, I'm like, It's been two weeks now I'm like back on it. So just gentle things, and I'll start doing yoga again will be my next self care practice.
Rebecca Hass 51:17
Cool. I love that you're being gentle with yourself around a major life transition, because that is so necessary. Two weeks isn't even that long, either.
Jenni Kowal 51:25
No, it's never ending. Yeah.
Rebecca Hass 51:28
And I want to validate that we were talking about anxious brains. Moving is a huge upset for a brain, like, you took yourself out of your environment. So there might be some residual...with that, too.
Jenni Kowal 51:43
Before we like, you know, actually moved, there was a lot of emotions coming up, and I just sat with them and cried. I was like, I'm not sad that we're getting a new home, this is obviously exciting, but holding space for both feelings that, oh, we're leaving this apartment, that was me and my boyfriend's first place living together and all the memories, and just really starting to enjoy, like the routine of living there. Then it gets uprooted. And then now it's like, okay, wait, we need to like buy a lawn mower or like, find a shovel. Like all these things that I didn't have to worry about before. So that's why I say it's exhausting to buy a home. It's not just the process. It's like, I don't want every weekend to be like a project on the home. I want to actually enjoy life, too. But there's a balance, I can enjoy working on the home too. It's just like, I think I have like residual, like from growing up on a farm, there was always something to do that I had a hard time relaxing. So I'm like, I want to make this place, you know, a sanctuary and then know that all the work we put into it will pay off and in the years to come.
Rebecca Hass 52:50
Yeah. And you're probably feeling kind of imbalanced in that right now. Because you're realizing, oh, I need a shovel. Oh, I need all these things upfront, and hopefully that'll level out.
Jenni Kowal 53:02
Yeah, I hope, soon. Yeah, but I've been doing this self care to make me realize that, oh, this is what I need right now. And it's really just surviving. And we didn't have like wifi for the whole day yesterday. I was like, it's kind of not, it was stressful, because I had to do some work, but I was like, we have a DVD player, we have DVDs, like what is, you know, we just have what we have, we don't have to like, feel that wave of Netflix indecision and stuff. So those are the grateful moments I have for, you know, having everything unpacked and settled now that we can, you know, take one thing at a time at least.
Rebecca Hass 53:40
Yeah, it's kind of freeing when you don't have wifi or power or something, last time when our power went out. I was like, "Alright, well, there's the piano, like, that's what I'm doing today. And I usually don't give the piano enough time because there's a lot of other things, you know.
Jenni Kowal 53:57
Yeah, there's always gonna be something until you decide that it's a priority.
Rebecca Hass 54:01
Yeah, exactly. Which is a whole other episode we could do, too. But being mindful of the time here, I have two questions that I always ask people at the end. Number one, what does being a whole person mean to you?
Jenni Kowal 54:18
Whoo, it's a good question. I think it just means allowing experiences to happen for you and with you, and creating those experiences that excite you, and, like in the holistic sense is just trying to take care of yourself in the mind, body and spirit way that, you know, it might change from day to day, but knowing that like this journey is for life and it's always going to change and like, you know, just know that like, I have my mantras like I am enough I put it on my self care card deck and everything and it's like, you're enough as you are and like everything else is just bonus.
Rebecca Hass 54:58
I love that. Thanks for that answer. Everybody has a lot of common threads when they answer that, but I love hearing each person's unique take on it. Yeah. And then, lastly, what are you excited about right now?
Jenni Kowal 55:14
I haven't been back home to my, my family is in New Jersey. So I haven't been home since Thanksgiving. So I'm actually going home this weekend to see my family and get some stuff from my childhood home, and that'll be a fun experience. And then my parents are going to, we're going to drive down together with furniture and whatnot. Then I'll be excited to have like, people in my home that aren't us, and we're getting a couch this week. So it just feels like this is the nesting that I want to do. Even if I'm far away from my family, I'm excited that we have guest rooms for them to come visit.
Rebecca Hass 55:50
Oh, that's so great. Yeah, that's gonna be really fun. And having visitors is really that thing that makes you feel like you really live somewhere.
Jenni Kowal 55:57
Yeah, like, that we can have a meal together. And it's like, okay, that the house party or the housewarming has begun.
Rebecca Hass 56:04
Yeah, you're welcoming someone into the space. Yeah. That's great. I hope you have a great weekend.
Jenni Kowal 56:09
Thank you.
Rebecca Hass 56:10
So thank you so much for coming on. I was so excited that you said yes. And I knew we would have tons to talk about and I know that people will really enjoy this conversation, so thank you so much!
Jenni Kowal 56:23
Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
Pianist and composer