Unbreakable Mind & Body

50. Unsticking Your Creative Brain

• Tiana Gonzalez • Episode 50

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Stuck and staring at a blinking cursor? We’ve all been there.

We start with the jam: notes that won’t cooperate, ideas that feel foggy, and the impulse to grind harder. Then we pivot to changes that work in minutes—walking, doing small chores, or pulling out a canvas and letting color lead. 

From there, we dive into the question that anchors my coaching: How is that working for you? 

If you’re ready to trade pressure for presence and build momentum one small step at a time, press play. If this resonates, subscribe, share it with a friend who’s feeling stuck, or leave a quick review to help more people find the show. 

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Website: unbreakablemindandbody.com

Email: info@unbreakablemb.com

Disclaimer: This show is for education and entertainment purposes only. This is not intended as a replacement for therapy. Please seek out the help of a professional to assist you with your specific situation.


SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Unbreakable Mind and Body Podcast. I am your host, Tiana Gonzalez, a multi-passionate creative, storyteller, and entrepreneur with a fierce love for movement. This is our space for powerful stories and actionable strategies to help you build mental resilience and elevate your self-care practice. Together, we will unlock the tools that you need to create an unbreakable mind and body. Welcome back to the show. I am your host, Tiana, and this episode almost did not happen. At the time of recording or when I was intending to record this episode, I kept finding myself up against a wall. I felt a creative block. I was frustrated. I just could not, for some reason, I could not put together cohesive thoughts and come up with something to discuss with you that I thought would be helpful for you. And there, right, right there. Right in that moment. That is the very thing that I decided to talk about. So on this episode, we're going to talk about what do you do when you are feeling stuck or when you have a block. And it's like you have the words, but you don't know how to put them together, or you have the thought, but you can't string the thoughts together in a way that it makes sense. You're kind of floating around. And I will tell you that initially what I wanted to discuss with you on this episode, which by the way, this is episode 50. Yay! Let's celebrate. The original topic I wanted to discuss with you is the powerful question that I started to use in my business, working with clients and discussing with prospective clients when we're talking about, you know, potentially working together. And that is the question of how is that working for you? That question created such a huge shift for me when I started to move away from simply telling my clients answers or simply giving people formulas or laying out the roadmap for them and telling them step by step the process that they need to take in order to go from where they're at to where they want to be. Obviously, uh an experience or something in line with my personal experiences and the things that I've done, whether it be in physic in physics, listen to me. Although I did do three years of physics when I went to engineering school, but whether it be in fitness, health, wellness, nutrition, and also with entrepreneurship. But here's the thing: I started to make some notes regarding this question, this powerful question, this topic, and I got stuck. And I thought about, all right, let me try to grind out these notes. And literally nothing was coming up. Then I decided, all right, I'm gonna go for a walk. I put on meditation music. I then stopped and moisturized my hands before going out for this walk. I sorted my recycling. I took out the garbage and I just went out into the neighborhood with the meditation music on and my moisturized hands. And I decided to stop at a local sushi spot to get food. I wound up sitting at a table, a two-top in between, two other couples on either side of me, one couple on either side of me. Unfortunately, I decided let me take my air pods out of my ears while I'm sitting at the table. I actually have a weird thing. I don't like to have them in my ears when I'm eating because it makes chewing very uncomfortable. It's just a really loud sound. So I decided to just listen to the ambiance in the restaurant, look at the TVs that were playing above the bar, which I could see clearly from my table, from my seat. And I eavesdrop down the conversations of the couple on either side of me. I didn't intend to, I wasn't looking to do that. It's not something I had on my bingo card for the day. However, it was entertaining. And then I realized this is what I want to talk about on the podcast is just being stuck and then, you know, moving through the body, figuring out a way to just get through the stagnant energy. And the other part of this is sometimes you just gotta sit in it. Sometimes life, the universe, whatever higher power it is that you believe in, sometimes that is trying to slow you down so that you can be sure that the thing you want to do or the thing that you're motivated by or inspired by is actually legitimate for you, and it's something you want to take part in, or it's something that you want to show up for, or it's something that you want to talk about. So I made these notes in my phone and I said, okay, this is what I'm gonna talk about. What do we do when we're blocked? I finished my meal, it was excellent. By the way, it's very risky for me to eat most Asian cuisine because I am allergic to sesame seeds and sesame oil. So if I go anywhere where there's any type of sushi or Thai food or Chinese or Filipino food, I have to be very clear about my allergy because sometimes sesame oil is mixed into the ingredients. Sadly, I cannot have things like spicy tuna roll or a spicy salmon because often uh sesame tahini is used as an ingredient in the spicy mayo. So I don't even risk it. And I ordered the uh sashimi appetizer, and then I had three rolls, all just you know, simple cut rolls. One was yellowtail, one was tuna with avocado, and the other, I can't remember. I think it was salmon and avocado, like pretty basic, very simple. I don't get the designer rolls that are smothered in tons of sauces. Those are fucking delicious, but uh, they're not really in line with what I'm trying to do with my health, wellness, and my physique. An occasional treat, yes, but not my standard go-to. And just on a total side note, I mean, this wouldn't be an unbreakable podcast episode if I didn't go on tangents and twists and turns and take you through a fun little journey. Just be mindful, if you are tracking your macros and you're conscious about what you're putting into your body, sushi is very healthy and delicious for you. However, not when it's smothered in sauce, not when it's anything deep fried, and oftentimes, sugar is used in the rice to make it stick together. Now, that may not be the case everywhere, but in a lot of these fusion-style restaurants where it's very fast-paced, especially here on the East Coast in the suburbs of New York City, you can get sushi express. And often there's a lot of sugar and rice vinegar in the white rice or in the brown rice, if that's the route you go. That's what makes it so sticky and delicious. So there's actually more carbs, which turns into sugar than you think. So be mindful of that. So I finish my meal, I decide to walk home, and I thought about painting, and I said, you know what? Painting will be a good outlet because I'm gonna move my body, even though it's more of a creative and artistic venture. It's not trying to force a story or an episode or notes or use any sort of brain power except for being present in the moment and focused on the thing that I'm doing. So I knew by just pulling out my paints, diving into some different colors, I used a black canvas, and I started to just go with it. No real plan. I just sort of started painting some waves, and then the illusion of curtains that were separating on each side, almost as if when you're looking at the painting, it's like looking through a window, and then far back there is a floating heart. So a black canvas, red and pink floating heart in the middle, blue, different shades of blue curtains that were opening from the center out one to each side, and then along the bottom are these very volatile, crazy right now. They're blue waves. It's a lighter shade of blue than the curtains. And what I'm thinking about doing is adding some rocks into the water, trying to create the illusion of more of a 3D shape with the heart, and then of course, giving the curtains more depth. I like the color scheme that I picked because it's a very bright blue and then a darker blue, and then I'm gonna sprinkle some uh white and black in there too, just to give it more depth. And it was through this painting experience that I realized that just talking about being blocked is probably enough for us for our conversation today. How many times are you laying down at the end of the night, you're relaxing, and then all of these wonderful, powerful ideas come to you, or you remember things you need to put on your to-do list, and now you're up, you're energized, and you can't sleep? Or what about when you get into the shower and you get this massive creative explosion? Like, what good is it gonna do you while you're in the shower and you're trying to shave your legs without cutting yourself and then shampoo your hair without burning your eyes, and you have all of these thoughts flowing to you. Well, what's happening there is that you are relaxed. And for many of us, that's probably the only time that we're completely relaxed when we lay down a bed to go to bed at night, or when we're about to take a shower, maybe also doing other things like cooking or some chores around the house washing the dishes. I know for me, I get a lot of really great ideas when I'm washing the dishes. Now, I do not have a dishwasher. My hands are my dishwasher. Uh huh. But, you know, for some people, I know they rinse and then they put it in the machine, they press a little button, and this machine makes noise for hours and hours, and then you get moderately clean dishes when you pull them out of the dishwasher. But I digress. But it is through those moments where you're not forcing anything, you're just sort of being. And that's when the downloads come in. That's when the creative juices flow to you. That's when you get some of your best ideas. Now, what do I do when those things come up? Well, I either scribble it on a piece of paper, or I'll do a voice note to myself, or I will do talk to text in a note in my phone. And then sometimes I'll go back to it and I'll add to it. Like I did at the sushi restaurant yesterday. I had this idea about what I could make this episode topic about, and then I just expanded it, and it has become an actual thing. So next time you find yourself at a place where you're kind of stuck, you don't know what to do, you're you're looking for inspiration, or you have a deadline, maybe the answer is in doing less, is in taking your foot off the gas, is in shifting gears completely, moving your body, shaking your hands, going for a walk, taking out a a sketchbook and a pencil, you know, something like that that allows you to be present, that forces you to stop thinking so hard about the thing that you need to do. And it just allows you to flow and be. Creativity is like a muscle. The more you use it, the easier it becomes to tap into it. Similar to writing, the gym, content creation, cooking, anything that's sort of a skill you have to develop, it will get better the more you do it. So now we're just talking about volume. But it's also important that you take a rest and that you take a break. So the next time you find yourself stuck, maybe shift gears, maybe meditate, maybe pause, maybe write down some notes and then come back to it later. Now I'm looking at these notes for the question, how is that working for you? And I have to say, that really is a transformative question for me. It helped me change the energy with all of my clients and with prospective clients because the reality is in order to meet people where they're at, in order for them to find the best solutions that's going to work for them to create sustainable change, baby steps, thousands of baby steps that add up to a massive transformation. But in order to make that happen, it's probably better if the person tells you what they think would be best for them. And as the coach, which is my role in all of these relationships, I can provide support, I can give the guideposts, I can point out things that we should be looking for that may or may not go well. But ultimately, it's up to the client to do the work. So a really good example would be if a client told me that they wanted to lose body fat for the summer. Well, this is the perfect time where in the fall, before the holidays really start to pick up, this is the perfect time to start implementing some of the changes that will be required once we fully step into a proper body fat shedding type of plan. Not much is going to change in the gym. It's the stuff we do outside the gym that changes. And that's the stuff that I don't have clear line of sight to. I'm trusting my client to do the things that we talk about. So this is the perfect time to set us up for success for when we actually kick that off. What can we do now? Well, it's going to depend on the client and what they have going on in their life. How do they eat during the weekdays? Where are those opportunities that are clear and jump out like, you know, so obvious to me, but maybe they're not obvious to him. And so we start there. Let's start making these little changes because we're creating habits and the little microhabits that we put in place that we do consistently, day after day, week after week, month after month, compound. And all those tiny little steps and adjustments and tweaks will create that massive shift that we're looking for. Now, what this will do during this time of the year, we're really focusing on a couple things, and I'm happy to share them, although it may not be specific enough for you. But this person has opportunity to fit in another meal in his day, definitely needs to increase his protein portions across the board and minimize late-night snacking. Now, there could be a lot of reasons why the late night snacking is there, or why this or why that. We're not going to get into that right now because what I'm trying to do is show you how the question of how's that working for you is pivotal and important because he's going to try a few things and at a week check-in, I'm going to say, Well, what's going on? How is this going? And he can say, I did this, I did that, I did this. And then we ask, How's that working for you? And sometimes people think it's working great, and sometimes it works great temporarily, but it doesn't work great long term. And so that's where my expertise jumps in. That's where we make the changes. But it is a dance. So it is erroneous for somebody to just show up and get in front of me and say, Yeah, I need a meal plan. That's nice. You can go talk to ChatGPT for that. You can go Google a meal plan. You can probably download one from an influencer on Instagram. Doesn't mean it's going to work for you. Doesn't mean it's going to give you the results you want. It doesn't mean it's going to yield sustainable change. But if you want to work with me in a coaching relationship where I share with you 30 years of knowledge, experience, a lot of mistakes, hard lessons learned, trials and tribulations, what to steer clear of, what to embrace, I'm your girl. Success really comes down to thousands, I mean thousands, of baby steps, micro steps that accumulate over a long duration of time. Now I hope that you found this conversation helpful. One about taking a chill, getting out of your own way when you feel stuck creatively. And then also thinking about, you know, maybe working with somebody to make a shift and asking yourself, how's that working out? How's that working out for me? You know, I've been doing this, this, and this, but how's that working out for me? And being honest with yourself about the answers. I appreciate you riding with me. If you have an area in your life where you're feeling creatively stuck or you would like a little guidance or support, you can send me a text. How do you do that? Check the show notes. There is a link that says send us a text. It comes right to me, and then I will be able to answer your question on an upcoming episode. And don't worry, your identity will remain anonymous. I'm here for you. I want to support you. I want to help you live your best life. I want to help you become that unbreakable badass that I know that you are. And we can do this together. So if you enjoyed this show, please make sure to subscribe so that you get notifications every time a new episode drops. And if you feel inclined, you can leave me a five star rating and a review. It really helps for the show to gain visibility and traction and to reach more people just like us. I appreciate you, and as always, I'll catch you on the next one.