Speaker #0Do you struggle with self-blame, often beating yourself up for every single thing that goes wrong in your life and creative career, even when those things are not really your fault? If so, this episode is for you. I'm going to share with you a self-compassion hack I learned through playing, wait for it, Monopoly, and why it's an important thing to remember on your creative journey and in life in general to start to drop the charges on yourself and just be happier as you pursue your dreams. Welcome to Unleash Your Inner Creative with Lauren LaGrasso. I'm Lauren LaGrasso. I'm a Webby Award-winning podcast host and producer, singer-songwriter, public speaker, and creative coach. This show sits at the intersection of self-development, creativity, mental health, and spirituality, and it is meant to give you tools to love, trust, and know yourself enough to claim your right to creativity and pursue whatever it is that's on your heart. Today, as I mentioned, we're going to be talking about a way to tame your tendency towards self blame and how the game of Monopoly helped me figure this out. But first, creative cutie, I have some amazing news. Number one, as you know, my brand new single, my version and cover of Genie in a Bottle is out now. If you love me, if you love the show, if you love seeing indie artists succeed, please go ahead and follow me on Spotify or Apple Music, wherever you get your music. Also on YouTube. That's a place. Go there. Give me a subscribe. I think that it's a subscription there. So go ahead and subscribe for exclusive content and then go listen to the song. Listen to it a few times. Send it to a friend who loves 90s and early 2000s pop. As you know, my goal is to get this song to 10,000 streams. It's lofty, but it's a doable goal. And this community helped me win two Webby Awards against much bigger shows and companies. So I know that together we can achieve this dream. So go ahead, stream and download Genie in a Bottle, share it with a friend. And also please reach out to me via my DMs and let me know something simple like that, that I can do for you to help you achieve your creative dreams. My goal is that we all help each other. And so this is my ask for you. It's a simple way you can support me. And my next little piece of news here is this is the first episode I have recorded since I got engaged. That's right. Timmy, my former boyfriend, current fiance, got down on one knee and he asked me to marry him. And we are just so over the moon excited. And I want to thank all of you who saw the post on Instagram and have reached out to me. So many of you. who've been with me from the beginning have seen me from past relationships to my single time, to falling in love with Timmy, to now taking this beautiful next step. I never thought I wanted to get married. I never thought I would get married. Timmy's the first person I met that I was like, yeah, I can see how marrying you would be fun. I can see how getting married and taking that step would be beautiful. I just want to thank you for your support of me and our relationship. Anyone out there, again, I've said it before, but anyone out there who is a cynic, I want you to know that love can come to you too, because I truly was a cynic before Timmy and I fell in love. I always hoped to be a romantic. I think somewhere in my heart I was a romantic, but I've been so hurt. That part of my heart that yearned for deeper love kind of just shut down and said it was stupid to protect myself. And I was you, if you're listening and that resonates, that you feel cynical toward love. And I just want you to know it can happen. And when it does, it's even more beautiful than you could have imagined. So if you've supported me on my journey, which if you're listening, you have, I just want to thank you and tell you I love you. And thank you for loving our love. So now to the episode. So as I'm putting out this music, obviously, I'm going through a lot of emotions. You heard my episode where I basically had like a mental breakdown on air, but also gave some really good tips, I believe, on how to. emotionally navigate putting yourself out there again as a creative. You know, this is my first single I put out in three years. And in doing it, and also just in being as busy as I've been lately, I'm concurrently while doing the single working on launching my speaking career on to a different level, working on my reel and my deck. And obviously, I'm still working a full time job producing and that has been wonderful, but obviously time consuming. And now I'm engaged, so I'm going to be planning a wedding. There's just like a lot of stuff going on. And as I've had all this piling up and the pressure of this new release coming and wanting it to be as good as it can be, I've realized how much I beat myself up. no matter the circumstance. If something goes wrong, no matter why it went wrong, in my career especially, I always feel like it's my fault, even when there are potentially many other factors. So this is just something I've been realizing about myself, like how much time I spend beating myself up for things I can or can't control. Like it really doesn't matter what it is. In my mind, I always think I could have done better, I should have done better, this is my fault. So I struggle a lot with self-blame. And there are times when it's good to take accountability and blame. And there are times when it's actually harmful to you. Just putting unnecessary strain on you for no reason. So there's a big thing that we can forget when we're taking inventory of our creative lives and just life in general. And that is there is luck involved. Okay. There are also other things involved that are beyond luck. Like, you know, some people have certain privileges that you might not have. Some people... got further ahead because of like knowing someone. You know, there's a million different things that can put someone into an advantageous spot. But there is also in any career, but especially in a creative career, an element of luck. And it's scary to admit that. But here's what got me thinking about it. Last weekend when my parents were in town, my mom, my dad, Timmy and I played a wonderful game of Monopoly. Okay. It got me thinking. We all started out with the exact same amount of Monopoly money. We all started out with the same ability to roll the dice and see what happens. We all had the same strategy, which was anytime any of us landed on an unclaimed property, we bought it. And yet, sometimes certain people, my mom, by the way, like if you can ever get a chance to play Monopoly with Joanne LaGrasso, let me highly recommend that. She is a damn delight to play with. And I didn't even mind that she was wiping all of, I was going to say wiping all of her asses. She did that for me too, though. The woman is a saint. I mean, as a child, she did that for me. Let me be clear. But she was whipping all of our asses and having a great time doing it. And so you couldn't help but root for her because she was just having so much fun. I mean, you can't see me, but like the way she rolled the dice was she took the dice in her hands, shook it around. and then sprinkled it on the board like it was glitter. I mean, it was just, it was wonderful to watch. So it was interesting to me because we were all given the same advantages at the top. We all had the same amount of money, and yet certain people landed on more properties and therefore were more able to grow their wealth and their financial world. And I wanted more than anything. Anytime I rolled the dice, I was like, please, please, please let me land on a property that's unclaimed. And I did get some, but nowhere near as many as my mom and Timmy got. They just got so many more than me. And it was truly based on chance. The fact that their roll of the dice gave them more opportunities to land on unclaimed properties. And so I started wondering as we were doing that, how often in my creative career have I been in that situation where I rolled the dice. I wanted so badly to land on an opportunity and I put in the work to get there and I just didn't get it. But instead of realizing, okay, so much of this is up to chance. It's not all my fault. There are things that are just out of your control and you have to let that go and forgive yourself, forgive the universe, forgive life for not letting you get there this time. Maybe there was a reason for it. Instead of having that mentality, maybe I said, this is all my fault. If I would have tried harder, I would have been further ahead. If I would have given more to it, I would have been in a better place. So like, even when I did do everything I possibly could, I still couldn't just accept that sometimes life and our careers can be unfair. Or we at least don't understand why we're not given certain opportunities. And there's no rhyme or reason to it. And it was in playing that game that it... finally clarified to me. Like, you can literally have the same exact start that someone else had, put in the same exact effort, and still, luck, chance, they play a factor in these things. And I think in order to cultivate self-compassion, we need to start acknowledging that piece. I was talking about it in therapy today, and part of what I think makes it so hard for me to acknowledge... the luck factor or the chance factor in these things versus just being like, oh, I should have just tried harder. I didn't have that opportunity because I'm not putting in enough of an effort. Instead of acknowledging that, if I always make it my fault, There's a tricky thing that happens there because that means in my mind that I can fix it. But if it's a luck thing, if it is a thing where I tried my best, I wanted that thing so badly. I put in all the energy I could and I still wasn't able to get there just because of luck or chance. I have no control over that at all. And that's kind of terrifying. I mean, you hear people say all the time, especially about show business, it's... preparation meets talent meets luck. And I think literally until this Monopoly game the past weekend, I had been forgetting about the luck part. And I would say it's also connections. It's preparation meets talent meets connections meets luck. But the luck part is huge. And the luck part has a lot of bearing on whether or not you even make those connections in the first place. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, whatever your creative career is, in order to cultivate more compassion for yourself and just like a more well-rounded viewpoint about your life and career and creativity and your dreams, start to think about that piece and ask yourself in the times when you're beating yourself up over not getting the thing or not being as far along as you want, what parts of your path so far have been that you rolled the dice, you did everything you could, you tried to land on the property, and still you didn't? And that wasn't your fault. Can you tell yourself you did your best? Like, hey, to me, Lauren, like you did your best every single time. Can you just let yourself off the hook for those moments? Kind of like heal your relationship with life or God or the universe or whatever it is that you believe in, like, and your creative path in that. Sometimes it's just not fair. But here's the interesting thing, too, to circle back to the Monopoly game. even though timmy and my mom were getting all the properties and like making more and more money from people landing on them there's also this timing piece which may also be part of luck in that when we ended even though i had way less properties in them because of a few lucky things that ended up happening to me in the end because we didn't finish the game like monopoly could literally go on eight hours so we only played for like two but when we all counted our money you At the end, I still had the most, even though the whole time it looked like I didn't. And so that also taught me an interesting lesson, which is like, as Kenny Rogers says, you got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them. Like sometimes it is a timing thing too. It's not just about like what opportunities you get. It's about knowing when to strike on something or when to stop something or when to like, I don't know. Or it's like the slow and steady game. I don't know. It's just so... interesting. This isn't a fully developed thought yet, as you can probably hear. I'm kind of processing with you right now. But the big takeaway and the call to action for you is if you're someone who's really, really hard on yourself and blames yourself for everything, if every time something bad happens to you, you believe it's 100% your fault. If you kind of victim blame yourself, okay? I want you to take an overview of your life and ask yourself, what parts of this are luck? what parts of this are opportunities that were kept for me? Maybe because of your gender, your race. Like even if someone's not explicitly discriminating against you, like here's something I found out on a lot of radio stations, they literally have a rule where you can't play two female artists back to back. So like there are literally things happening in the world that are holding me back as a female musician. There's that piece too, but then there's the luck piece. And so it's like... I'm not going to take all the blame for why I'm not where I want to be. I'll take the part that's mine to hold, but I'm going to start to like let myself off the hook for what I can't control. To clear this and to like put a cap on this, I'd love for us all to take a breath together and just forgive ourselves. We didn't do anything wrong in the first place. And so much of life in general is luck and random. Moving forward, I am only going to take accountability for the things I genuinely can control. And I'm gonna try my best to let go of the rest. And so I hope you can do the same and have a little compassion for yourself and know there is a lot of luck involved. That doesn't mean you still can't. do the best you can do and put it all out there and try with all your heart. But also to acknowledge this, I think is important and true and painting a fuller picture. So remember, if you're a person who tends to be hard on yourself, who is always feeling like you're wrong, it's not just you. There's many factors in all of this. And so just try to be really kind to yourself. Pursuing your heart, pursuing your dreams is brave. It is a brave, brave endeavor. It takes courage. Creativity takes courage. And so I want you to treat yourself with love, kindness, care. and let yourself off the hook for the things that you can't control because that is not your fault. I love you so much. This episode was hosted and executive produced by me, Lauren LaGrasso, produced by Rachel Fulton with music by Liz Full. If you like what you heard, remember to rate, review, and follow Unleash on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Share the show with a friend and post about it on social media. Tag me at Lauren LaGrasso and at Unleash Your Inner Creative, and I will repost to share my gratitude. Remember to follow me on Spotify and download and stream Genie in a Bottle. I love you and I believe in you. Talk with you next week.
