- He was bald and round and kind of potato shaped and he had little eyes and a round little nose. And he had rubber band arms, like wiggly arms. Basically my spirit guide was a Muppet . So imagine a bald orange Muppet. Uh, and his name was Otto, OTTO. Unlike me, a championship overthinker, certainly visual and verbal. He was nonverbal so he showed up and all he was about was comfort and care. - Welcome to Love's Everyday Radius, a podcast brought to you by the Hoffman Institute.
My name is Liz Severn and on this podcast we will explore graduate's journeys of self-discovery and learn how the process transformed their internal and external worlds. Hope you enjoy. Welcome everybody. I am so excited because today our guest is Brandy Grobe. Hi Brandy. - Hello. I'm so happy to be here. - Well, we're so happy that you are here. I know a little bit about you, but I'd love it if you introduced yourself to our audience about what you do in the world and all that good stuff.
- Excellent. I always feel like this is the hardest question 'cause it feels so broad and it's like, well, I'm lots of different things, but, uh, I, I like to say that I get to do my two favorite things for a living, which is drawing and thinking. I help people get their thoughts and their feelings and their ideas out of themselves and onto paper with something called visual thinking. And, uh, very happy to teach people all around the world.
Uh, right now I'm at the tippy, tippy top of Chicago, just a block away from Lake Michigan. - Hmm. Beautiful. So visual thinking, tell me a little bit more about what that means. Visual thinking. - So it's an imperfect term. It's kind of the best we got. It's about using our strengths. So some of us do have very, very good skills, natural skills at visualizing things in our head, in our, in our mind's eye. Uh, if you're like me, you're actually so good at it.
You can picture yourself doing something and think you actually did it . So that's, that's a danger of really strong visual thinking. Uh, but it also involves things like spatial reasoning, like how do different things fit together in physical space? How do different pieces fit together in your mind? Certainly, I'm gesturing right now. I tend to talk a lot with my hands, like for any of us who love learning with our hands, hands-on learning, kinesthetic learning.
That's kind of putting together all these different ways that we make meaning for ourselves with that visual sense in our minds, using our bodies, using our hands, and helping to figure out what our own big picture is. - And so how did you even come to, did you coin this term or how did this even come to be a part of your life, a part of your career? - Visual thinking is a term that's been around a long time, very, very little known.
And for me it was truly just the way I made sense of the world around me. I was that kid who drew all the time. Uh, the family story is, I was two years old when my Aunt Myrna brought me my first coloring book and they set me up in what they used to call a baby butler, which is kind of like a high chair with like a table with edges on it. And the legend goes that they put this coloring book in front of me and I was silent for hours.
And then when they came over to see what I was drawing, I was drawing like patterns and, you know, just, and I wasn't coloring it in 'cause nobody told me , that's what I was supposed to do with it. So I was just drawing all over the pages. But apparently plaid, I, I, I'm dubious about the plaid, but that's, you know, how the story goes. And then, you know, happily, thankfully, that's just what I kept doing. My favorite way to, to figure stuff out.
My, it was definitely my safe space growing up in pretty volatile household with a very angry dad. So it was always my way of having that safe space between me and the page, me and the piece of paper. - And it was always in the form of drawing. - Yes, absolutely. I mean certainly I, I've always enjoyed writing as well, you know, there's, there's sort of a, the dabbler in me that anytime I love picking up new mediums and trying things out, but drawing was always, always the core for sure.
- And how did your sort of creative expression grow as you got older? I mean, starting at two is quite a young start. How did you relate to creativity or how did it kind of grow with you? - that's, you know, I love that question of how did I relate to it? I tend to be very, very spatial in my thinking, like very much like how close is something to me, how far away is it? I absolutely love that the, that this podcast is called Love's e Everyday Radius.
Like there's that very spatial sense of the energy we put out, like what's the reach of the energy we put out. So for me, creativity, it's kind of like so ubiquitous. I don't even think of it. Like if I think of it spatially, like it's just in me. So when folks talk about creativity as being something outside themselves or something that's occasional or unfortunately for a whole lot of people it's that thing that feels really far away, right?
It's the thing that somebody else does, but I don't do. For me it's just that's, it's what I'm made of. So , there was never, I did start super young. There was never a sense of separation. Part of teaching visual thinking, something I've done for years is this very weird job title called graphic facilitation. And that's when a company hires me to come in and be the visual thinker for them for the day. So I'm making these giant like four foot by six foot drawings on paper of their conversation.
I'm drawing in front of people for a living because of that. So often when I'm on a break, somebody will come up to me and they will tell me exactly how old they were, what they were drawing and who told them they couldn't draw. It's just like a switch that flips in them all of a sudden this thing that they enjoyed doing moments before the switch is flipped off. Like, okay, I'm not good enough at this to do it.
And so they lose this entirely beautiful playful way of making meaning for themselves. You know, it's just heartbreaking to hear it. And you can see it in somebody's body language, like how much they feel it and how, how present that memory is. It's very often if I kinda look at the general arc, it's usually a parent or a teacher. It's occasionally a sibling and it's very, very rarely them comparing themselves to somebody else and deciding for themselves that they can't draw.
The thing is that drawing that drawing is, is it's a process. You know, I love the Hoffman process. We're talking process, we're talking tools as a little kiddo as that little squirt, you're just making this drawing 'cause it's, it's fun and it's a way of figuring stuff out. And then that adult, almost always an adult comes up and they then judge that drawing as a product . It's like, well that isn't good enough. Well it's like why does it have to be good? Like where does that come from?
And it's, and of course certainly we can have the baggage and the judgment from an adult thinking, oh if my child is drawing, they're gonna become an artist. And then how are they gonna fend for themselves and how are they gonna make a living? And it's just crazy that like you're just sitting there with a piece of paper and some crayons having a good time and then an adult comes in and has all these thoughts about it and then you lose that tool.
That tool's gone when you were just using drawing as a process to, to have some fun and figure stuff out. - I mean, I'm kind of speechless 'cause really thinking about it in that sense of product versus process and how yeah, this you lose the, the ability to process your thoughts, your emotions, right? That I'm just now connecting so many children probably are drawn to in that way. And then this sort of adult comes in with this product mindset and patterns emerge. Patterns begin.
- Yes, for sure. And they're, they really stick. One thing that's just kind of a happy accident of English language is the word drawing is both a noun and a verb. And you know, when we're those little little kiddos, we're using it as the verb, you know, it's just a thing we do. And then that adult comes up and judges it as a product. You know, that's when you get the judgment of is it good or bad? Is it pretty or ugly?
Is my child gonna grow up to be an artist or are they gonna be, you know, actually make a living? You know, I'm saying that sarcastically, , understanding that there's lots of ways to have wonderful livelihoods as artists out in the world. And when you're drawing as a verb, when it's a process, the only judgment of that drawing is does it get me a step closer in what I'm trying to do? That's it.
- I love this thought of does whatever form of expression I'm choosing, does it get me one step closer? Right. And that really speaks to it being this process, is that what you're - Saying? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think there's, oh gosh, there's, when you talk about product versus process, a huge reason I'm so hell bent on teaching what I teach, even if it's something most people haven't heard of.
And unfortunately when a lot of folks define themselves as a drawer or not a drawer as an artist or not an artist as a visual thinker, are not a visual thinker. A huge reason I persevere is because we just don't make enough space in our lives for process, for stuff being messy, for figuring stuff out. You know, boy howdy, you know how hard we can be on ourselves.
So many of us, and I'm sure a huge percentage of people who come to Hoffman, they're perfectionists or they're, or they're trying to become recovering perfectionists, right? And it is absolutely incredible how how much we judge ourselves full stop, but how often we expect something to come out of ourselves fully formed. And I always like to say like we didn't come out of our mamas fully formed. Like we had a lot more development, right?
So you very likely have heard that phrase, don't judge your insides on somebody else's outsides. I've expanded, right? You've heard that plenty. And it's always worth repeating. Similarly, don't judge your process to somebody else's finished product. We move in the world and we see different things people have created. And I'm talking very, very broadly, I'm one of those people, I don't look at the word creativity and think visual art.
Unfortunately a lot of people, they very narrowly think creativity equals the arts. Whether that's dance or music or visual art or whatever that might be. I certainly think creativity and process is far broader. So we move around the world looking at other people's finished products and we rarely have any understanding of where did that product come from. So, you know, I used to be an enormous fan of listening to DVD commentaries.
That's actually something I really miss with streaming now because I loved hearing about the process. How did this happen? Or if I am looking at a finished piece of artwork, you know, getting to see those sketches and we read, we pick up a book, we read a novel, we never see how many drafts that writer went through.
So unfortunately, much like comparing our insides of somebody else's outsides, we are so often comparing somebody else's finished product with zero, zero idea of the process that got them there. So I think it's one of those ways we, we, it's just such an easy way for us to be hard on ourselves 'cause we don't get to see somebody else's process.
And that's why I think it's one of the reasons I think we just don't give ourselves that sense of play, that sense of messiness, you know, just, just the space to figure stuff out. - Absolutely. I mean even as you're saying that I'm like cringing a little and like messy. You want me to be messy in feeling the surround brandy. I don't know about that, but it's true. It's giving ourselves the permission to be messy and leaving those, the judgments behind.
- Absolutely. And I think, you know, certainly this is absolutely amplified anytime we're in a professional role. 'cause we're thinking I'm the professional, this is what I get paid for, you know, this is the thing I'm supposed to understand backwards and forwards. And yet, because we're human, we should be hopefully we're always learning and we're always figuring stuff out and there's always going to have to be a place for that messiness.
And unfortunately a lot of people in their professional roles, they don't feel that sense of safety that that ability to be messy and vulnerable because you know, this is their capital J job or capital C career out in the world. - Yeah, well absolutely. And I'm curious how you or advice you have for navigating this self-doubt or fear a failure or fears of whatever kind when pursuing any sort of creative endeavor?
- That's a great question. I really do spend a lot of time talking about the inner critic. It's a concept so many of us know and I really appreciate that. You know, during the process we talk about that dark side, you know, it's a form of that and of certainly plenty of us come to Hoffman with family of origin stuff about outer critics, right? So there's the inner critic, there's the, that might have been very, very well trained by the outer critics in our lives.
So many, many, many of us understand that concept of the inner critic. And for many, many, many of us that inner critic is very loud and very persistent. And first I really would love to invite folks, if you feel that voice happening a lot, probably more than any of us want it to, is to just kind of notice where it is in our bodies. Uh, for me it absolutely sits behind my left ear , that's my inner critic. When it pipes up, it's like for some reason it's just behind my left ear.
Uh, I think for a lot of us it is that sense of that inner critic actually feeling inner, like being somewhere in our bodies. And I know this sounds probably ridiculously simple, but my first step is always to say to somebody, grab a piece of paper and just get it out. So let's say you have an idea you wanna work on, you're really excited about it. So there's that thing, that objective, that goal.
And as soon as you're like, you know, stoked and excited and thinking about that thing, who arrives that inner critic and that, my feeling around the inner critic is it's trying to keep you safe. It's trying to pull you back. It's trying to keep all this stuff inside of you. And the antidote, the perfect first step is just getting it out. I feel like as soon as I get those ideas or those thoughts or those feelings onto a new surface, in my case paper , that that helps quiet that inner critic.
Like they don't have the power over you anymore. 'cause those thoughts and those feelings and ideas aren't still stuck inside of you. Where they, they can, you know, hold onto them, grab onto them. So I think that's my first thing is just saying get it out. A whole lot of people already do this with journaling, uh, just writing stuff out. Maybe it's just a good old to-do list, right Task list. My next step would be to invite folks to first grab a piece of paper that's blank.
So no lines, no lines, just a beautiful blank sheet of paper. Step number one. And then step number two to turn that blank piece of paper 90 degrees. 'cause so often we grab a piece of paper, it's in portrait mode, right? That's the mode we use day in and day out. That's what we used in school. All our years of school, what we do all our hours, days lives in careers is thinking from left to right and top to bottom with words.
That beautiful, beautiful medium that is far more specific and far more linear of text. So I wanna invite folks to just take a blank sheet of paper, turn at 90 degrees. 'cause just that little shift is going to shift our thinking. So now you're looking at a landscape, that blank piece of paper is this terrain where your ideas can go anywhere. You know, you can plop something down in the middle.
The next thought that comes up, you think, well where does this fit in relationship to what's already on the page? And it's gonna feel really fricking weird for most folks because we've been so wonderfully trained for years. Again, left to right, top to bottom, let's get these words down, let's put 'em in order, let's keep on going until we run out and get to the bottom of the page. So just that shift 90 degrees, that landscape mode, that blank piece of paper will shift your thinking.
- And so you said just put words down, right? I, but I love that this isn't even about drawing. I mean it can be right, but it's also just this idea of getting it words out, emotions out. - I'm really glad you asked that question because you know, for me, I don't think words 'cause I have a lot more tools at my disposal, but of course why, you know, you would think words because that's what we have been using for so long.
I know a lot of people are uncomfortable with really big broad , broad uh, instructions. I think that what you put out on that piece of paper can absolutely be words. When I say visual thinking, a lot of people think, oh now I need to draw. You can, if you like, when I teach visual thinking, it is certainly getting words down. It is using lots of lines. Uh, maybe there's an arrow from one idea to another idea or a dotted line between something that might be connected to something else.
Sometimes it is useful to use symbols, really scratchy, scratchy, whatever kind of marks. Get those feelings out or get those ideas out. But what happens with turning that page, shifting our thinking. One of the simplest things is when I talk about visual thinking, it's really like writing with a lot more choices. But instead of those choices being scary, those choices are what lead you to making more meaning. So I might have an idea, I wanna get it down on the page.
So first thing I need to think is, what is this idea I wanna capture? Uh, how do I wanna put it down on the page? How many words will work? Where does it go on the page? Is it related to something that's already there? Is it really similar to something I've already made in my drawing? Is there a connecting line I wanna make between this idea and the next idea? Or it could be this particular idea is a certain color or a certain size.
We really have this opportunity to figure out how do these pieces fit together. Making those big ideas big, you know, making something a certain color because that color it connects to the feeling your emotion around that particular idea. Or it could be something like color coding. Like all my ideas around this are green and all that. My ideas around this are blue. So here we're going beyond writing with so many more choices that truly help us figure out that big picture for ourselves.
And that big picture still could be super duper messy. You don't necessarily have everything figured out, you know, in one drawing, but that drawing gets you a step closer in what you're trying to do. That's all it needs to do. - Well, and I what's coming to mind with this is using this form of visual thinking or writing in the form of a quadrant check-in - Absolutely, absolutely. - Listening to each aspect, our, our body, our intellect, our emotional self, our spiritual self.
And just seeing what comes up. Because we talk about in the process, you know, not everyone is a visualizer in a lot of these things that we do in for in a, in a form, in a way of meditation or visualization doesn't always resonate with people. So I actually love taking this framework and putting it into something like a check-in how we are doing what's showing up on the paper. - Fantastic. Absolutely. That can be as simple as now I have a piece of paper in front of me.
Let me check in. You could certainly choose to do something like fold the paper into four corners, right? Put this, this part of the quadrant in this corner. I don't, you know, even as I say that it feels, it feels nice to, to give yourself some spaces to work in but not necessary. One of the things is if you did a visual check-in, did your quadrant check-in on a piece of paper? What's great is you're capturing those ideas.
So now you can, you've got a little bit of distance, you can observe what you put on that piece of paper and that gives you new information. So for instance, one day I might sit down with this piece of paper and notice, oh my goodness, I have written a whole lot around my spiritual self. I wasn't expecting that today. I thought it was gonna come in really thinking more about my emotions. But that's information, right?
So just look at that drawing and go look at how much of this page is really me checking in with my spiritual self. And then there's like a little tiny bit about emotion or a little tiny bit about your physical self that is giving you information that you wouldn't have gotten necessarily had you not grabbed that piece of paper and captured those thoughts. - And I really hear you taking kind of one of the core tenets of just mindful awareness to this no judgment.
You're just seeing the correlations perhaps seeing if there's any connections. You're just really taking whatever's on the paper, whether it's the quadrant check-in or any other type of visual thinking and just letting it be coming back to that process of just not judging it but just this, let's see what's here. - That's right on. That's beautifully said. 'cause all it is is a piece of paper. Like I love using scrap papers, the backside stuff that's been printed out.
First grab blank paper, second turn at 90 degrees third, don't get a fricking gorgeous sketchbook or journal . How many of us like wanna go to the stationary store and pick out the perfect thing? As soon as we do that? Goodness gracious, the amount of expectation and pressure we put on ourselves. And I'm somebody who, I'm so non-linear, like , I really have problems drawing in any kind of bound book.
I know it sounds silly, but I always want like a a loose piece of paper because I can shuffle 'em around and sort things out and then, then there is absolutely nothing precious about that one piece of paper.
And there's nothing that has to be in any particular order on that piece of paper when it's, you know, a loose piece of paper versus something bound, you know, spiral bound or you know, some fancy journal - When this is reconnecting me to all of the times when I was younger as a teenager and doodling in my notes in my notebook, right?
And I just, even sometimes if I'm in meetings or you know, I'll find myself doodling, I'm recognizing there's probably so many of us that because of that inner critic or outer critic just started to slowly shut down a form of expression. - That's it. That's it. And the reason you're doodling is you're creating a circuit between more of your body. You know, so often we're in meetings and we're expected to, I'm just, you know, just kind of picturing a meeting scenario.
We're expected to be listening, paying attention and we have these visual cues of making eye contact with the person speaking, you know, your body language, right? When we're doodling, we are using more of our body, we're getting our hand involved and we're creating kind of this circuit between our ears, our brain, our eyes, our hands, our whole bo more of our bodies.
I can't say our whole body 'cause usually we're sitting pretty stationary, but we're creating that stronger circuit and you're using that doodling to help you keep focused because you're making marks on the page. I am certainly not anti doodling, I am anti-people calling visual thinking doodling because by its definition it there is a mindlessness of it. You know, we're not making meaning in those marks.
Even if those doodling marks are helping us stay tuned in, help us stay focused when instead of those daisies, nothing against your daisies. I draw clovers, I draw these four loop clovers. That's my go-to that. That's an invitation to start thinking more about capturing what you're hearing, like what is standing out, uh, what do you want to get captured on that piece of paper.
Just like you might use these tools for anything that's kind of internal, your own internal thoughts and feelings, not anti doodling. Noticing the doodling is that way of staying connected. But unfortunately to a speaker, to somebody else in the room, it looks like you're distracted. It actually looks like you're not paying attention. Which is the opposite is true. - Yeah, it's amazing. We've been talking about different forms of expression, right?
Visual art, writing, speaking, all of that falling under the realm of creativity. What else comes to mind as far as this invitation of what creativity is or looks like? - I am so glad you asked Liz. I'm so glad. I truly, like I said, I think of creativity as being just a way of making sense of the world of how we process the world around us. And that can be, certainly, it could be as a musician, writing music, playing music. It certainly could be a painter painting a painting.
And it is how you get dressed in the morning, you know, what you wear, how you express yourself could certainly be, uh, the pleasure you take in cooking or feeding your loved ones. It can be gardening, it could be the way you set your home up to be extra cozy. You can be creative in the ways you connect with your loved ones. The way you parent it is that broad, it is that pervasive that it really does touch every part of our lives.
I tend to, like I said, when somebody says, oh, you're so creative, or talk about creativity, I just kind of blink at them . I'm not trying to be rude, but because it is so internal, it is like so much a part of me and I found it easier to talk about all these things we're talking about less with that C word because it is so fricking loaded and talk about self-expression. And I think that's such a massive part of what happens at Hoffman.
For me, when I came to Hoffman, I know definitely had my family stuff I was working on very clearly. And for me it was that lifting the weight of my family stuff, but my family patterns off of me. I wasn't the kind of person who came into Hoffman feeling very shut down or cut off for myself. I know a lot of folks, that's their experience.
And I remember midweek, there was a point where, you know, we went through, we've been through several days, lots of really physical stuff, really visual stuff, really, really emotional, very internal work. And as we start to break out of those patterns, I saw so many folks where, and they would say this and you could see it in their body, their physical self, that they felt more themselves than they had in forever.
I just noticed a whole lot of folks really feeling like they were expressing themselves their true selves more than they had and who knows how long. And I had went to my teacher Anne, and I said, Anne, I'm noticing that like now that people are feeling more themselves, this is kind of feeling like summer camp where like everyone wants to hang out with each other all the time. And I said, that's not where I'm at. Like I'm really happy for them.
But you know, that wasn't, that wasn't work I needed to do here, right? Because I think because I had all these channels open all the time of ex all these different outlets for my self-expression, that just wasn't where, where I was at. And I, I was so appreciate that Ann said, if that's not what you need, don't do it.
. It's like, one thing I so appreciate about Hoffman is how yes, it is a group situation, but there's this absolutely brilliant facilitation of having your own individual experience even though you're surrounded by folks. And the teachers are so good at making that space for each of us to have that individual experience and not letting a particular individual like grab the spotlight or you know, take up all the oxygen in the room. We all know we've all been in those rooms, right?
So we're having our own individual experience. And once it became summer camp, when it did feel far more like extroversion party connection, connection to connection, and I bless 'em, I was super happy for those folks. You know, I was so happy that she said, if that's not what you need, that's totally okay.
I think that is a perfect example of what we're talking about where when folks do spend their lives kind of getting narrower and narrower, not everyone feels this way, but kinda that sense of like, I can't be myself so I have to be somebody else. You know, making themselves smaller or making themselves fit into a certain identity or a certain box.
You know, it was brilliant to be able to see all these folks have that sense of self, have that sense of self-expression that they haven't had in forever.
- Well, and just reminding in that I'm just keep hearing self-expression and I love that you've offered that word instead of creativity and really allowing people to recognize the ways in which they already do express themselves or the ways in which they're called to want to express themselves and for whatever patterns there's constriction or there's, um, judgment there. But it's an amazing reframe of how we can all bring creativity back into our lives.
- I certainly hope it's useful 'cause that's all I want for folks because each one of us are just these incredible beings. And I, you know, I, I know what it's like to live get to be myself every fricking day, . And I'm so thankful for it. And that's why I love teaching these tools. I say it's drawing, which is a word that scares people and or I say visual thinking and then like, what the heck is that? These are just natural tools we did use when we were that little kiddo.
And it's just a matter of, you know, this is an outlet. What I love is I love so much I now I'm all excited and I'm like, hooray, this stuff, it really does only take paper and pen. Like that's not, those are not hard things to find, you know? So the more than what I teach in particular, you know, teaching you those different choices that help you really get those thoughts organized, there's no friction. Like there's no expense. There's just like, grab paper, grab pen, you're good to go.
That's it. So, you know, that's, that's the always having that outlet for yourself and how much it can do for you. - And I'd love to hear a little bit more about your process. I hear that you are quite a visual and kinesthetic person. So walk us through a little bit of your process and if there's a moment in there that really stands out. I mean, it was, you did your process, uh, 2010, so amazing, right? That all these years later it's still, you're able to recall and remember.
So walk us through a little bit of that. - Oh, for sure. Uh, yeah, for me, I was, uh, my mom had died the year before and I wasn't terribly close to her and I was really surprised at the grief how it just hit me sideways. And I had a very dear friend, have a very dear friend, John Ward, and he said, I did Hoffman 20 years ago, and as a facilitator I give it five stars.
That's all he said. Now we're both facilitators, John and I, and you know, the fact that I figured if it was still around 20 years later and he gave it five stars, that was it. So very simple decision. It took about a year for me to afford to be able to come to Hoffman. What was so brilliant, what I love, well, one, I love the homework, I love that absolutely everybody had to do the same work before we even set foot in the space.
One thing that was so wonderful was to see over the days of the process, how many different tools we were learning. You know, as you already mentioned, so many of those tools are more visual, like drawing out our dark side and, uh, certainly kinesthetic using our bodies, you know, beating the crap out of our dark side , right? So, you know, that was already built into this process. So that absolutely resonated with me.
One of the most important moments for me in my process that absolutely stands out was not the familiar , was something that was completely unfamiliar to me. I had no point of reference for. And that was when we were in, uh, in visualization and we were invited to, we were asked to invite our, our spirit guide. And for me, that concept of a spirit guide and then there was kind of a sense of like higher power to it. I'm somebody who was never raised with any religion.
I'm an atheist, certainly in my quadrant, the spiritual self was the least formed. We were asked to invite that spirit guide. I was like, well, this is uncomfortable. I don't have an answer for this. So let's see who shows up . So, so in my case who showed up, he was bald and round and kind of potato shaped and he had little eyes and a round little nose and he had rubber band arms, like wiggly arms. Basically my spirit guide was a Muppet . So imagine a bald orange Muppet.
Uh, and his name was Otto, OTTO. Unlike me, you know, a championship overthinker, you know, certainly visual and verbal. He was nonverbal. So he showed up and all he was about was comfort and care, you know, he showed up and he wrapped me in a blanket another time he just handed me a mug of tea. So he was there to be gentle, help me be gentle with myself.
Unsurprisingly, I'm, you know, even though I have these great tools, I'm exceedingly good at being hard on myself, family, outer critics as well as, you know, my inner critic. But Otto, he just, he just wanted me to be comfy and cozy. That was it, of course, me being me after that first visualization, I went back to my room and I made a drawing of Otto and I also made this, I draw the symbol kinda like a sigil, like very symmetrical of those letters.
OTTO, you know, of course part of Hoffman was noticing that that spirit guide was absolutely filling a big gap in my identity and my way of, of being fast forward about five years from Hoffman and I am dealing with some kind of like medical mystery. I have. I'm exhausted, I've dropped a bunch of weight, I just feel awful. And I am working with a fantastic doctor.
We're running a bunch of tests, we're trying to figure out what the heck is going on and he knows that I'm go, go, go, you know, always hard on myself, always going, going, going. And he recommended I see a therapist who was Buddhist and very much into somatic practice. So being in your body, I thought, okay, I'm open to this and I see her and first session, every session, the first thing we'd do is she would invite me to close my eyes and notice where I was in my body.
And for me, I don't, I have a very weak sense of time, . I have a very strong spatial sense, as we've already mentioned. So for me, when I close my eyes and notice where I'm at in my body, I'm very, very often pulled to the right. That's because in my sense, sense of self, the past is on the left, the future's on the right, and I'm always thinking about the next 17 things I'm gonna do. So that's usually when I'd open my eyes and describe what was happening.
I was that, that feeling, that pull to the right. So one session I come in and I can't remember exactly what was going on, but that particular day I closed my eyes and it felt like the bottom dropped out of me. I was like thinking, I I, I think my center of gravity might be stress. What is that? Right? And it was very destabilizing and you know, I described that to her and we certainly did not solve that in the, you know, by the end of that session.
And it happened that I was about to go on this series of back-to-back trips right after that session. So the first destination on this series of trips, um, I'm on the west coast, I'm in this room, there's a beautiful sunlight and breeze coming through. It was early spring, just sitting there in this beautiful space thinking about the bottom dropping out and what did that mean? And Otto showed up like, hey, there's my guy. There's my cuddly potato lumpy sweet little guy, looking out for me.
I was being hard on myself. I was even being hard on the ways I, I was, my body was responding to being hard on myself and auto showed up and was just there. And he was a comfort. And I thought, okay, , clearly I need a reminder of auto. So I decided to get that symbol that I had had drawn right after the first visualization, I decided to get that symbol tattooed on my outer right wrist.
To that point, the only first and only tattoo I had was actually from, I got it around the time it became estranged from my dad, my mom's death and my dad were the two things that absolutely brought me into Hoffman. That first tattoo was at the base of my left hand, my top of my left wrist. And that was the word perspective. And I'm left-handed. Drawing is my way of making meaning. That's how I get my ideas out into the world. And so I got that tattoo of perspective.
So right about the time I make this decision to get this auto tattoo on my right wrist, my doctor calls me and he's gotten some test results back and we figured out the, we solved the mystery and the treatment was simple. It was like, okay, take these medications, go from there. Fantastic. So another destination in the series of trips, I got the tattoo and there were all these brilliant synchronicities on the series of trips.
It was just incredible. So I get back home to Chicago and I have my next appointment with my therapist and I walk in and I, I'm an entirely different person. My energy is completely shifted, complete 180 and uh, she invites me to close my eyes, notice where I'm at in my body.
And naturally I feel that pull to the right, especially because I was about to go to Europe to teach for two months, feel that pull to the right and then that little rubber band wiggly arm comes around to the right and pulls me back in and says, Nope, you're okay. Nope, there was auto just pulling me back to center. You're good. No problem. So I opened my eyes and I described this, described this to her.
And as I'm telling her the feeling in that moment being pulled back to the middle, that really comforting feeling of being recentered. And I'm very quickly giving her the, you know, the backstory about this Hoffman and the, and the symbol and the decision and da da da. The whole time I'm telling her this story, she is beaming, she is just smiling ear from ear and she says, can I tell you something? And I said, of course you can tell me something.
And she said, well in Buddhism there's deities that have more than two arms. But when a deity has two arms, the left arm symbolizes skillful means well jackpot. You know that my left hand, right? That's my money maker, right? That's my skillful means right there. And of course I asked what about the right arm?
She said, self-compassion and how perfect to have that symbol of that spirit guide who only cared about my comfort, about that sense of safety and security and just mu so much of the sensory just cuddliness had shown up all those years ago at Hoffman when I was invited to do an exercise, invited to this visualization that I had zero frame of reference for, right? Something that definitely felt uncomfortable, but I thought, alright, let's see what happens. And that's who showed up.
And , if you want even more synchronicity, it was just a crazy time of wonderfully crazy time in my life. Only a couple months later I met a man who was bald with a cute little nose. He was kind of potato shaped, but he did not have wiggly rubber band arms and he was far more verbal, but he wanted nothing more than to look out for me with that comfort and that care. That's my husband Jeremy.
So 10 years later, yeah, I remember telling the auto story to friends who had met him and they said, that sounds like Otto. He sounds like Otto. I'm like, I know . So, uh, one of the things I love was, um, when we got married a few years ago, we wrote our own vows and he came up with, and this is just so perfect, it perfectly shows you how much he knows me and is looking out for me in our vows. He said to me, I'm here to remind you that food and water and sleep are almost as important as ideas .
So I found the right person. - And even just hearing that was such a beautiful reminder and we sort of mentioned it earlier, but just how to bring self-compassion into this whole journey. Whether it's, you know, we're feeling that we're stuck in a creative rut or block or really whatever it is, but especially in this form of discovering different methods of self-expression to bring in that other arm of self-compassion and self-love. - Absolutely, absolutely.
And for me, my inner critic, and this definitely gets back to the family patterns, you know, so many people, their inner critic tells them they can't do something, you know, they're not capable or they're not worthy. For me, my inner critic would tell me that I can do anything and I need to do the work of three people and I needed to, to do it impeccably.
Why? Because I was raised by an outer critic who was a quality assurance inspector for the Department of Defense and I had his talents and I was gonna do all the things he didn't do creatively. So you know, a whole lot right there in where I was coming from and what I was looking at. - Well, and do you have any advice, uh, for anyone that feels stuck in a rut or struggling to find inspiration or any of those blocks that they might be resonating with? - That's a great question.
I think what comes to mind is, and this definitely was a another incredibly important moment in the process, which came after the process, which was we have these seven days of experiences. We have this, you know, this beautifully robust week of all these different experiences and we're learning all these different tools. And weeks later we had our follow-up call and uh, so many folks were like, well I'm not doing this exercise and I haven't been doing this exercise.
And of course, of course it's all these folks were being so hard on themselves that they haven't maintained the kind of experience and practice that you all perfectly cultivated and facilitated as teachers in that particular space for that particular time, right? So people immediately rushed to being hard on themselves. And I love that the teacher on that call said, no tool guilt. Do not feel any guilt about these tools.
So for anyone who's feeling stuck, I think it's so important to just think about what are new tools. I'm trying because I love the word tool because it's so connected to process and it's so connected to activity and there's never ever, ever, ever, hopefully folks experienced this from themselves at Hoffman. There's never gonna be that one tool. And yet we think , if only I found that one tool that fixes everything, right?
That's why in the real world we have a saw and a hammer and a sewing machine and a instant pot, right? , we have all these different tools to help us make great things happen. And to extend that, you know, for anyone who's feeling stuck, I just say just try stuff. Just try stuff. I know that sounds really basic, but it's truly just see, try a new medium, try something new and see what happens. It's gonna feel awkward. If something's totally new to you, it will feel awkward.
That's just information that awkwardness is not telling you you're bad at that thing. Don't let that inner critic convince you that that discomfort means anything more than, you know what, this is uncomfortable. And why wouldn't it be because I've never done this thing yet , right? I have no practice with this tool.
Whatever that tool is, you know, and again, that could be I'm trying out a new recipe or I'm, I'm learning a new cuisine or you know what, me and my kids, we've never done this particular thing, so let's go try a climbing wall. You know, it could be anything, but we're just, all we're doing here is we're trying out new tools. Some are gonna feel comfortable, some aren't, and we're building up different practices, different process we can use. And it's just that toolbox, right?
It's you're just filling a toolbox with different tools. And there should never ever, ever, ever, ever be any tool guilt. You use that tool when you need it. So you might say, you know what? Now that I've been rock climbing with my kids, I know that when I am completely in my head with work and I just cannot shake it, I'm gonna go to that climbing place because I can't think about all that stuff, right? I, all I can do is be in my body and be, you know, reaching for that next part of the wall.
- And this reminds me so much of just the concept of play. I mean, I hear it in your voice and your energy. You just have this beautiful joyfulness to you. Yeah. And it just, it's this reminder for me, it just let play be a guide forward, a path forward to more expression, deeper creativity, all of that. So thank you. - I so appreciate you saying that Liz, because even as I was describing that the word play came up a couple times and I switched it to practice and tools, part of my family stuff.
I joke that I was born 40, when you say play, I think that for me it's just like, what would I know? You know, I don't know what that is. Like I was born 40 and you know, I was the kid who didn't hang with other kids. I wanted to be with the adults and you know, all these things. And whether that was just kind of how I was wired or maybe it was the parentification that happens, you know, when you have to be much older, much sooner than you would want.
I can't know, you know, who knows where exactly it came from, but you're absolutely right, it is about play. I can appreciate that some adults in the world, even if they weren't born 40, that might feel really hard to access. For me, it's very much, I love using the other P words of having some kind of practice. And certainly we've talked a ton about the p word of process, just saying, you know, it's a verb. What is the verb I'm trying right now?
And again, if we can extend it to what I was saying about visual thinking, you know, you're trying something out, you're trying out a new tool and the only judgment is, did this get me a step closer in what I'm trying to do? That's it. - Amazing. Yeah. And I just, I will always remember Brandy, get a piece of paper, blank piece of paper, , no lines, , turn it 90 degrees landscape mode and let's go.
So I, I just love the simplicity of that real, a real chance to see what comes through and learning, whether it's what patterns show up or what comes through on the other side of that paper. - I really appreciate what you're saying. You know, what comes through it is that giving yourself that space to be open and receptive and see what emerges.
And there really isn't any reason, I know we're very, very trained , but there's no reason to invite that inner critic, like get that stuff out, bypass that inner critic. If your inner critic feels like it's inside you, like it is for me, just being open, see when, seeing what emerges. Just like when I was invited I was asked to invite that spirit guide in and I had zero frame of reference. I'm like, let's see what happens. So you know, again that that space, that space to see what emerges.
- Well thank you so much Brandy. I feel very inspired and just really grateful to be able to dive into this with you and get your take on it all. So thank you so much. - You are so very welcome and I appreciate that.
You know, I really appreciate that you shared with me that feeling of distance from that the idea of creativity or that word or that concept that because you didn't do certain kind of things that most of us think of as being capital C creative, that it didn't feel like it was accessible, accessible to you.
But hopefully in this conversation, especially when we just think about good old self-expression, I certainly hope it helps you and I certainly hope it helps our, helps anyone listening have that sense of feeling more themselves because they can, can express themselves whatever form that takes. - Absolutely. Thanks Brandy. - Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza in Grassi. I'm the CEO and President of Hoffman Institute Foundation.
- And I'm Ra Rossi Hoffman, teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute Foundation. - Our mission is to provide people greater access to the wisdom and power of love - In themselves, in each other, and in the world. To find out more, please go to hoffman institute.org.