Trenton ReynoldsIt is Friday, May 20th, 2016. This is Room in the Trees, a podcast about people who make stuff. It's about living life as a creative person. All of it. The following was recorded on May 12th, 2016. This is episode number six. Shut your monkey. Room in the Trees is hosted by Sabrina Ward Harrison and me, Trent Reynolds. We are also joined today by artist and author Danny Gregory, who has recently published a book called... Shut your monkey. How to control your inner critic and get more done. Also present today in our minds and hearts is Remy Gluis. I hope I'm saying that right. ♪ our latest patron at patreon.com, Rameek. Thank you for your support. I'm grateful for you and happy you are part of Room in the Trees. I hereby dedicate this episode to you. Unless you don't want me to. to. If you too are enjoying the podcast and would like to help us continue, we need your support. Head over to patreon.com backslash room and subscribe for as little as a dollar a month. We would love to grow this podcast into a community and bring you more great content. you can also help spread the word by rating us on iTunes and telling your friends about us we have a great conversation for you today so let us begin
Sabrina Ward Harrisonall right here we go yeah life in progress here we go
Danny GregoryOur topic is going to be the inner critic.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonDanny, you sound like you're a DJ. Like in a kind of like a late show, like a late love chats after dark.
Trenton ReynoldsI do have a very soothing voice. I was born FM.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonWhat's your inner critic right now? How many podcasts have you done?
Danny GregoryHow many episodes have I done? Yeah. Well, here's the thing is I keep making interviews with people for my podcast, but I never actually release my podcast. That's what we did for about a year. I keep accumulating more and more of them, so it's possible that I'll just erase them all when I'm done. But we'll see. How many have you done like that?
Like a dozen, maybe.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonTrent, do you want to share a little bit about how we started with it?
Trenton ReynoldsWell, similar to this, I think we just started recording conversations. And at first, our conversations were so personal. Like some of the information was not information we were comfortable sharing with other people. And that kept us from wanting to publish it as a podcast, even though that was the original intent. I think I have a bit more structure than you guys have,
Danny Gregorybut I don't know. I find that I'm not worried about the personal issues. And I think what I'm worried about actually the most is the commitment, the commitment of continuing to do this. If I launch it, then I have to keep doing it. Whereas if I never launch it, then... then I don't have to worry about that but so I just keep accumulating more things and kind of pushing the sense of obligation further and further down the road so that I don't so eventually at one point I'll have recorded like five years of the podcast and then I can just step away and have it automated we relate to that I mean I was thinking that it could be posthumous the whole thing that
Trenton Reynoldswould be cool. That's not a bad idea.
Danny GregoryYeah, so I die, and then the next day my podcast starts. If you're listening to this, it could be that you know that I'm dead. For all three of us. Hopefully that's a long way off.
Trenton ReynoldsI think, Danny, that you and I are probably a lot alike in a lot of ways. And I think that's what I find so compelling about having recording conversations with Sabrina and collaborating in general with Sabrina is that very, very opposite in a lot of ways. And I think one of those ways being that she, and correct me if I'm wrong, Sabrina, you almost, you feel stifled by too much structure.
Sabrina Ward Harrison- Yeah, I had a meeting yesterday on Skype with someone about a licensing thing. And, you know, they're all the typical questions like, "So what's your work about? What's your kind of vision?" And da-da-da-da. And I said, "What if we just totally make it up from here? Just completely make up the conversation and just talk?" And I felt I got to know her. so much more in eight minutes of doing that and she was uncomfortable by the end i could tell it liberated her a little bit i don't want to just go in like hi nice to meet you so and so and that's what i admire about danny's your process and teaching and is that like that authentic just experience and being present and just loosening it up in all the ways you can do that shake the
Danny Gregoryhow you feel about structure and why you think that it's important.
Trenton ReynoldsWell, I think structure obviously informs our understanding of what it is we're doing, right? Or like what the ultimate goal is, what we're headed towards. It's also a safety net. It kind of relieves us from having to... I don't know, react constantly and differently to each bit of information because we kind of have an overall view of what's happening. So I think it can be very constructive and generative because it gives us focus, but I think it can also keep us from... engaging completely in a moment. It would keep us from really responding and being present. So I don't know. I can... I personally... Structure is a comfort thing for me more than anything else, I think. Like recording today. You know, you wanted to kind of get a sense of structure before we hit record. And I would be the same way. But I think for Sabrina-- - Sabrina sabotaged it, yeah. - She totally sabotaged it. And it's not that she wants to, I think that she's more comfortable just hitting record and not feeling this pressure of having to create a structure.
Sabrina Ward Harrison- And at the same time, acknowledging that it took a lot of structure to get, the whole day's basically been built around this conversation. at this time so it's not that I'm like oh just press record you know like there is a structure to being once you're here but once you're here like really be here
Danny Gregorythat's all well it's like jazz or something like that in the sense that yeah jazz jazz has a you know you might have a theme you might be playing a song that you know as a standard but then you also allow yourself places to go. That's a great metaphor. But if you're completely free form, you know, it can be, it can become tedious, honestly. And I think your audience has to have a lot of faith in you that you know what you're doing, that you're going to actually go somewhere worthwhile.
And, you know, like I,
Danny Gregorythere's this pianist, Keith Jarrett. And, you know, he'll go into Carnegie Hall and he just sits down at a piano. Yeah. And he like doesn't have any plan and there he is in Carnegie Hall. They're recording him and he just starts playing and then he discovers things about what he's playing and it's always really interesting to listen to but then again, he's also spent decades working in piano bars and playing every possible... standard there is inside and out so when he sits down he's like he's there with you know all this experience behind him so I think that's what worries me about doing a podcast in a way because you know it's not a form that I'm necessarily that comfortable to expressing myself in even though the things that I'm talking about are things that I know. So I think I want to have guardrails in it so that I don't worry the whole time that I'm talking that it's going to be all chaotic.
Trenton ReynoldsBut it seems like in your art making process that it's not like that at all, though. Is that right? It seems like what you're espousing in-- like I just watched your video about drawing made at breakfast time. and it seems like implicitly you're just saying, you know, take this moment of your life and, and start making art. And you're, why can't that be the same in a conversation like this?
Danny GregoryI think because in doing this, this is a thing that we're making that is for an audience in a way. And a lot of times I find, like, I don't put any expectations on the things that I'm I make that anybody else is going to see them. I'm really interested in the process. So maybe it's because I'm new to this podcasting realm that I'm more in need of structure. And I don't, I feel like I'm going to bore people at the end of this if it isn't like, if I don't have a plan. But I also wonder, I mean, having been in advertising for a long time, which is a very tightly controlled, produced medium that, because, you know, there's millions of dollars at stake, there's lots and lots of decision makers, and everything has to be kind of worked out, and you have to be accountable for what you're doing. That's kind of my background. But, but I also feel like in any creative process, even if it is structured, it begins with, you know, a free form part of it, even devising the structure is free form, you know, so I think you have to let yourself go at some point, whether it's at the, maybe at the beginning or it may be later on.
Right.
Danny GregoryI mean, Sabrina, with the stuff that you do, it seems like you're reacting to what you've made, right? You start putting something down on a page, and then you react to it and add more stuff and do different things to it. Is that how it works?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI don't think I'm even reacting. I'm just experiencing. And then I'm, I guess my longing is to evoke and evoke that for other people through visual tone and color and light and in some ways some language but it all is a base. It's really experience based. I'm committed to experience. Here in Madison today I was really committed to trying to find someone to go canoeing with because I just really wish I had a and before the podcast, I'm like, I just want to go get a burger, and I talked to some people forever about canoes, and by the end of the conversation, canoe set up, we're going to go canoeing, it's going to happen. This girl was named Sam, like my best friend named Sam, when I was eight in Canada, and we built forts, we were talking about frogs, when we found frogs, you know, and that made my day. That kind of...
So...
Sabrina Ward Harrisonhopefully you're staying with the unstructured format of this because I feel now self-conscious
Trenton Reynoldsabout that. I think, I think what that, that whole segment right there, what you just said is such a perfect illustration. And I, I have such a, personally, I have such a hard time wrapping my mind around, um, that approach. It is, it's just, it feels so, uh, so different than my own.
Danny GregoryWell, I thought that was a cool solo. I mean, I think that-- I think that--
Trenton ReynoldsI love that. That's a cool riff. I sort of understand--
Danny GregoryI feel like I'm kind of in between you guys in that sense, that when I do a drawing, the reason that I do it is not to have done it but to be doing it. And that I don't necessarily sit down at all. Almost always, I don't sit down with an idea in my head of what it's gonna be like when it's done. And I'm there to, but I think slightly different than you Sabrina, I'm not reacting just to my own mind, but I'm reacting usually to a thing that I'm looking at and that I'm making a drawing of that thing. But I don't really have any idea of where it's gonna go, it's going to be like or and that to me is the fun of it it's and again my my goal is not to end up with a drawing but my goal is to be present in the moment and that's not a yeah that's not like a zen i don't have like a zen objective it really comes from my own um kind of uh therapeutic search for a way of getting out of my head and getting out of living in the future because when I think too much about the future, and it's less true now that I've been drawing for a couple decades, but when I started doing this, it was definitely to get away from my fears of the future. And so I found that drawing anchored me in the present, and this whole process was about being here now, and that drawing and looking at a thing and kind of uncovering it and discovering it was a way of shutting the monkey, you know, at a point when I didn't even know that that's what was going on.
Trenton ReynoldsSo in that description, what is the monkey? It's the fear of the future?
Danny GregoryYes, it's not just the fear of the future. It's the monkey is saying, this is what's going to happen. This is what's going to happen. You know, you've done this, and it's going to cause that, or this thing is about to happen. coming to you know it's gonna creep out of the bushes and jump on you there are all these terrible things that are happening and in the case in my case I had I mean I'm not it's not really the place to talk about it but I had undergone a trauma that that made all of my conceptions about where my life was gonna go had thrown off in the air and instead I didn't know where my life was going to go anymore. And so the monkey stepped in to tell me. And the things that it said were fictional, but it was so good at it. It was so vivid that it seemed real. But then when I sat down and drew a bagel, the bagel was infinitely more real than that. And so I was able to say, you know what? But the monkey is coming up with this. It could be one of a million things that's going to happen. But the vehicle is real. And making the drawing is real.
Trenton ReynoldsCan I read a quote that Sabrina sent to me via Instagram just yesterday? Sure. it's relevant to what we're talking about. It's a quote by Audre Lorde, and it says, if I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive. And I think this, I mean, the same goes for this monkey, you know, this thing that we come up in ourselves that that monkey is trying to define you is trying to define what your future is is it's this thing that you feel like is external to you um that's trying to make decisions for you right and the part part of the point is to to take that power back away from the monkey and you get to decide you get to define who you are and what your what your future holds
Danny GregoryI don't know, I thought-- - Absolutely, yeah, I mean, I never, that quote is really interesting to me. I personally never felt that concerned about what other people were thinking about because I sort of assumed that people weren't really thinking about me that much. But this voice inside of me was definitely definitely thinking about me. And that's one of the things I wrote about in this book is the monkey may be thinking about you all day long, but nobody else really is. Everybody else is thinking about themselves.
Sabrina Ward Harrison- But you sure feel like it. Like it takes a form of audience.
Danny Gregory- I went through a thing of keeping my illustrated journals for years, and then suddenly publishing a book that contained all of them. And then for the first time ever after, when I would do a drawing, I was always sort of aware, like, "Hmm, this could end up in a book." It wasn't an overwhelming thought, but it certainly was a thought that hadn't been there when I first started.
Trenton ReynoldsHow old were you when you did that?
Danny GregoryWhen I published my first book with drawings in it? Journalist, yeah. In my late 30s. Yeah. Late 30s, yeah. you know but but do you think that it's bit are you aware of that is that is
Sabrina Ward Harrisonthat a form of monkey to this sort of a public monkey it is it it's I think as we talked a little bit earlier today Danny we were on the phone and Trenton last week in our podcast conversation We are living in a very interesting time on many levels about publishing, social media, the era of paper, literally publishing and making books when we started was a viable profession. So when I started, I always went by the belief of create what you most want to find. And I wanted to find, I would have wanted to find something that if I was in high school I would have seen. It would be evocative on a visual level, breaking the rules level of things being kind of in the gutter, not following all the design protocol, but yet still working on a visual scape of their being an underlying design format to it and feeling less alone with the actual contents of it. And I felt I really could do it. And I remember being told by my fantastic editor, Becky Benate, who said, "It's like a child, you just have to let it, it has its own life in the world. You just, you make it and you let it back into the world." The best use of me is not to be conscious of of an audience every day of my life. It's to be as much as I can to be dropping back in and just sitting in the closet, recording this podcast with you guys and stupid leggings that are awkwardly really bright green.
Danny GregoryI'm wearing great bright green leggings too.
Trenton ReynoldsOh my gosh, guys, you won't believe this, but yeah,
Danny Gregoryisn't quite on the same level, but that you then see it again for the first time. And I'm sure that's true of paintings as well, that you can come upon something you did at another time, and you can see it as if you're a viewer or a reader rather than just as the creator. Because I think you can get away from it. You can not remember all of the pain or annoyance that was involved in making it. and you can step back and go, hey, that's actually kind of interesting. I don't know if you guys have had that.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAnd it can also not be interesting and you could just be like, I just made it to make it, like building it for it. You just...
Danny GregoryYeah, I don't look back on those ones.
Yeah.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonJust the physicality of making the...
Trenton ReynoldsTo extend that metaphor though of having a child and releasing it into the world and revisiting it, I think it might be an apt metaphor also in the fact that other people, it becomes its own thing, and other people have a relationship with this thing, whether it be your child or your creation. and then they come back, and all of a sudden, that relationship they have with that other thing, with their child or creation, makes them feel like they have a certain relationship with you, or that it means something about you. So I got from our conversation last week, Sabrina... was that the audience and what that audience became and how they viewed you and kind of the roles and expectations that they placed on you in response to your book wasn't always very great. It was something that was difficult in a lot of ways. lot of ways. And you wanted them to just love your book and find value there. Love it like you loved it. And not as much... Well, as you were talking about the format, the idea of a book and what it is, and you wanted to be able to control... you were interested in that format, that form the book and people finding a book in a bookstore, right? And you liked that idea. And then all of a sudden we're in a time when they can see a page of your book on Instagram. They can find... a podcast, they can respond to a little snippet or, you know, that the, the way that they interact with that thing is not as controlled anymore. And that kind of, I totally, it's an interesting
Sabrina Ward Harrisonthing because you, are you finished with your thought? Do you want to?
Trenton ReynoldsI like the idea. No, I'm just going to just, just to cap it off is like the metaphor of this, of your creation being this separate entity that people interact with, but also affects their relationship with you. I think it's just, it's a very complicated and potentially difficult one to navigate. Go ahead. I'm sorry. I'm done.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYou sound a little bit like a moderator in a debate. Like, and go ahead, Ted Cruz.
Trenton ReynoldsI don't mean to... I'm just trying to stay out of the way here. I think you two are... No, it's great.
Yeah. No.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYou know, I could have done like 16 of them by now, but I... They just, I feel like I'm like a single mother with five kids. Like I did them and they have their own life. And then I'm like, it's too close to the bone because there's so much truth in it. And Danny, you can probably relate to this with some of your... personal stuff you share, some of them are relating to definitely certain relationships with certain boyfriends and they're documented very real loves of my life that were part of the kind of structure of the books. Like my way I look at them, I see all different details than other people maybe see and they can resonate with things, but my experience with them is absolutely hesitant. its own, you know, just like a parent, you see a whole sweet undertone of little delicacies of, and I'm sure, Danny, for you, when you're, anything you're observing and taking in, the details still stay yours, you know?
Danny Gregory- Yeah, I mean, I look at my books and I remember, you know, they cover different chunks of my life. And so when I look at them, it'll take me back to those chunks. And I know that anybody else looking at them probably didn't have those feelings. They responded to it in some other way. But I think, you know, if you make something, you don't necessarily the exclusive owner and arbiter of what's right about it. You want other people to have their own reactions to it and to make it part of their history. I think that's, you don't want to just make, write something. I mean, I think that that's what, what makes art more important than just, you know, reading a book. You know, you can go and buy a book in the airport, read it. You have basically an expected reaction. You don't really bring much of yourself to it and then you're done and throw it away. But I think the books that matter, I mean, there are books that I've, I've owned since I was three, those books, like I have a really deep feeling in connection to them. And I think what's interesting about what happens now is for most of my life, it would never have occurred to me to contact the author. I mean, Sabrina, I've owned some of your books for like 20 years or something like that. It never occurred to me really to try to get in touch with you. like I felt like you, I mean, partly it can be because it can be a disappointment. You know, they always say, like, don't meet your heroes, but I think it's also, now we're just so used to everybody being accessible and accessible in so many different ways and probed and so forth that, you know, in some ways it kind of removes some of the mystery. - Yeah. - But also can theoretically give you more insight and more, you know, facets that you see about the thing, and it may enrich what you're doing or what you're experiencing.
Trenton ReynoldsDanny, what are the types of challenges or unexpected, I don't know, consequences of engaging with the various audiences that you have? you have audiences for your books you have classes yeah i mean i just always assume that
Danny Gregorynobody has any idea who i am or knows anything about me i was in i was in um albuquerque a couple weeks ago and my wife said to me when you're there why don't you just tell people that you're going to be there and you know maybe somebody will come meet you and i was like all right so i said on facebook okay i'm going to be sting at this place and i'm going to go and have a beer in the roof and i went up there like i was actually 10 minutes late because i just thought well what's That's the point. I'm just going to go up there. And then suddenly there were all these people there. And when I start talking to them, it was really interesting because invariably when I talk to people in those situations, I'm much more interested in finding out about them than I am particularly in finding out about what they think of me. But I always assume that it will be an interesting conversation just because we have at least what I made in common and probably a lot more if they like. it, then they probably like the same things I do. So that's interesting. Um, you know, but I always feel like Sabrina with your stuff, I feel because, um, it is, it is more abstract in a way, the emotions. I mean, and it appeals to probably a much broader kind of group of people than, than my stories do that you must have encounters that are like much more charged than I do.
If you do have them.
Danny GregoryLike paparazzi and, you know.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonNo, no, no. But I felt even, I felt even with you, I felt, I was, just when you said the idea of like, don't meet your heroes because they'll let you down or I don't know how you put it, but I really felt because of the snafu that happened last week, it was a very real feeling that you had an expectation of me that I did not meet. And that's...
Trenton ReynoldsI'm everybody's disapproving father, yeah.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonReally? Do you feel like that sometimes?
No. No?
Danny GregoryNo, I think people can have that reaction to me sometimes, sure. Mm-hmm. But go on, I'm sorry, what were you saying?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonSo, just saying that that's, you know, my inner critic, or my monkey on my back, is that I will be... kind of open to something and then somehow, I'm not sure how to put it, but the feeling I'm going to let someone down.
Danny GregoryTrent, can I ask you something?
Yeah.
Danny GregoryDo you, like when you're painting, do you, are you, what role does the person who's ultimately going to see your painting play in your head when you're making it?
Trenton Reynoldsinterest a gallery in this work. There are so many voices that I find I'm very susceptible to. So when I feel like I'm at my best and when I feel most present and most honest in whatever it is I'm creating, whether it be a painting or anything, writing an email is when I'm able to get to to get those voices out of my head. And I think I've accomplished that. I've been successful at that only a few times.
Danny GregoryNow, when you make something under those conditions, does it accomplish the goals of satisfying that audience? Yeah. In other words, when you disengage from the audience, you think you're more likely to satisfy.
Trenton Reynoldsthem in fact. Yes and one of the things one of my mentors in school taught me was that the more in-depth, the more intensely we turn inward and are honest and really searching for our truth, the more we're pointed inward, more intensely we try to find that, the more generous it will feel to our audience. So it's kind of this paradox, you know, like the more introverted we are, the more extroverted our artwork will feel. And I think there's some truth to that. I think the more... Is it because it's like a universality?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah, the deeper you go, the more universally you become, I think may start.
Trenton ReynoldsYou know, I think on the opposite side of the spectrum, when you're more personal and when you're really seeking for that, that your truth, you become more specific. And I think that specificity, those details are what people can latch on to and relate to, because we all can kind of function on a very general, you know, cliche level. But it doesn't really feel honest, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
Danny GregoryThat's interesting. I've been, I've been, um, I have to go and give a talk in a couple of weeks, and I'm talking about this book, "Shut Your Monkey." It's the first talk that I've given, um, on the subject for a while, kind of more or less ever. I mean, I gave, I gave a talk a few years ago that actually led to this book, but this is the first time I'm giving a talk after giving after I read the book and I've been angsting about this for months I have it on my calendar I put a like a weekly thing on my calendar nine weeks to go eight weeks to go and and I keep finding ways to put it off and I've thought about it and I've structured it and I've rewritten it and it's weird to me because I I wrote this book it's based on blog posts I wrote I'm doing these podcasts and talking about it I know this stuff I really do and and I'm not certainly not afraid of speaking in public. I do it a lot, but there's something about doing this particular thing and thinking about how people are going to receive it that, um, has really like, I've been tripping over it. And, and today was the first time when I was, I said, okay, I'm going to lay out some time. I'm going to work on, on this thing. And I just decided, okay, I'm going to start talking. I'm just going to do it. And I was very, very hesitant, kept tripping over what I was saying and so forth. And then suddenly something clicked and I realized I just need to talk about this from my own personal experience, just act as if I'm speaking to each one of these people individually and say, we all have this thing in us and here's what I've experienced and here's is what I've learned about it. But it was really hard for me, going back to what we were talking about earlier about structure, for me to get past this need for structure. And the structure was so overwhelming, my ability to be fluid and honest about it. But as soon as I thought, you know what, I'm just going to talk like I'm talking now to you guys, even though I'm standing in a room with lots of people on folding chairs, I'm going to still be able to be direct. I think that will be much more valuable than having some art fully directed plan.
Right.
Danny GregoryAmen. Amen. I know I'm like.
Trenton ReynoldsCould be another disaster too though. No, don't. Well, I'm a firm believer that, you know, it's, you got to take that risk. I mean, part of structure is it's comfortable, but you also are not going to get to the high that you can and the level of honesty you can if you. you take that structure away right it's part partially it's the vulnerability and vulnerability by definition means you can fail i don't think it's a bad thing yeah you know clutching the
Danny Gregoryhandrail as you climb up to the top of the 10 meter diving board you know but then there comes a point where you have to kind of inch your way out there and jump um absolutely and that's what
Trenton Reynoldsthe whole book is about yeah too yeah
Danny Gregoryyeah I mean it's funny because I I've now spoken to like a couple of shrinks about this and there I feel the most fraudulent you know because I'm like
Trenton Reynoldswhat the hell do I know and you know
Danny GregoryI'm not a psychologist and I you know and sometimes they'll say things that are kind of disagreement and sometimes in direct contradiction to what I've written and I say what the hell with it I'm not I don't know what I'm doing, so that's fine.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonWhat, can you give an example? We don't have to, and none of this that we share has to be all public, like we don't have to publish all this, but it's good just to have the conversation. Oh, I'm sure nobody's listening. This is for us, see, right? There we go. This is us.
Trenton ReynoldsThis is the way we avoid having to worry about it because so forth.
Sabrina Ward Harrisonso in relation to can you share a little bit about that for you i'm curious well i think one
Danny Gregoryof the things um you know i've been working under this impression that um this voice is really universal and that everybody has it and that in part it it stems from this the amygdala you know, this reptile brain that protects us and is, you know, sort of the core part of our brain, the fight or flight thing that really just is a voice that's going to say like jump. And then part of it is that it's, you know, this voice that came into your head when you were a kid and you're in you. mother told you not to run with scissors or or you know or could have been a teacher or something that there's some voice that was implanted in you so I was talking to the psychologist last week and she said you know it really comes from people who had very a scolding or derisive kind of authority figure when they were young and I was like you mean so if you had like super nice parents and everybody was really nice to you and supportive you wouldn't really have this problem and she sort of seemed to be going there with it and I thought oh man so so it is me it's not it's not just like the universal human condition I think what she went on to say really was that there are varieties of this that that if you did live in if did if you did grow up in a very supportive environment where your parents were you know directing you perhaps like I wouldn't run with those scissors but then could have went on to explain it and you know showed you why it wasn't a good thing and you were sort of okay with the with the critique as opposed to saying give me that you know what are you doing you're an idiot so if you had that kind of voice what would happen is at some point in your life you're going to run into you're going to run into somebody in a who's gonna judge you or who's gonna dismiss you. But if you've had this sort of more nurturing authority figures early in your life, when you come upon one of those, say you go to college and suddenly there's this teacher who calls you an idiot and dismisses what you've done, your feeling is gonna be, well, what's wrong with them as opposed to what's wrong what's wrong with me.
Sabrina Ward Harrison- Or the other way, it's so much more powerful. You just feel like everything that you were encouraged is, sorry, to jump in, sorry.
Trenton Reynolds- No, no, no, go on, that's all I had to say.
Sabrina Ward Harrison- But just, no, you, just when I thought you were leading up to saying the shock of when you were, like I felt my parents were really conscious of, you know, very 70s. You know, my mom was a parent educator and focusing on childhood development and they were fantastic parents, but then...
there's...
Sabrina Ward Harrisonthe... the... the inner critic voices, the mic in your back, feel like kind of unknown, scary. Oh, my gosh. Stop crying. But it's almost more, it's pretty intense because they're kind of people that you don't even know.
Yeah. Right.
Danny GregoryYeah, so it's almost like you didn't have your armor.
Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. So keep going.
Trenton ReynoldsYeah, I think there's also, I think probably another response to that, the person that you're talking to, the psychologist, is there's definitely a nature-nurture conversation to be had there as well. I know that this critical voice that I've got, I've got a very self-critical voice. default voice, my monkey is not very kind. That certainly was not something handed to me by my parents or any one authority figure. I can't, looking back through my history, I can't think of any single person that might've done that. it's just part of who I am. You know, could it be that, you know, just some of us are naturally, you know, born with a self-critical nature?
Danny GregoryWell, it's interesting that you say that because she said exactly that. She said, you know, you can have a family where you have, you know, half a dozen kids in it and they all can have different reactions to it even though they grew up in the same environment. You know, so it's definitely... there's definitely a lot of of it is wired into you in the first place so
Trenton Reynoldsright so yes and is that in contradiction so - is that in
Danny Gregorycontradiction I think because I do believe that you know we all have some degree of it I think the amount of We succumb to it varies. I also think that creative people have more of an issue with it. I think we do more stuff that we get, that we have evaluated. We put ourselves out there more. We take bigger risks. And all of those are things that set the voice off. That we're more likely to beat ourselves up because as opposed to having a job that's very safe or having a life that isn't on the edge the way a lot of our lives are, our jobs are. - That rings true to me too, yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsBefore we wrap up, Danny, will you take a couple minutes and just tell us about your book? I want the audience that we do have to be able to hear what you're all about and get excited about going to get your book.
Danny Gregory- Well, if you're still listening, this is the best $14.99 you will ever spend. It's available in bookstores everywhere And it's called Shut Your Monkey How to Control Your Inner Critic And Get More Done And basically it's a book that's about The voice that was in my head And how I kind of set out to find out Why it was there and what it was doing. I've worked as a creative person for a long time, and I've also managed a lot of other creative people and hired creative people. So I've dealt with all kinds of people, and I see that this is like a chronic thing, and it leads people to sabotage themselves. It leads them to not create work that they should. It leads them to behave badly, to do self-destructive things, like take drugs and eat too much and watch too much reality TV and stuff like that. And that ultimately it stems from some of the things we've been talking about here. It stems from your past. We have different degrees of sensitivity to it, but we all have it there. But then I go on to try and figure out what do we do about it? And I sort of talk about different strategies for it. One of the first is really to recognize that it's a thing. and that it's a thing that isn't really you. It's a thing that's sort of a separate thing that you carry around with you. And that if you can separate it from yourself, you can realize that it's not really right about most things, but also it can be used as a way to make your work better, not necessarily because it's criticism is valid, but because it's a way of pushing yourself. I also think that another way to deal with it is to be more productive. and that the more work you make and the more you focus on actually making stuff and not evaluating it but just making it the more that voice kind of disappears and that ultimately for a creative person the focus shouldn't be just on deciding whether what you're doing is any good it should be just on doing stuff and making stuff and the world is probably going to decide the world may often be better at figuring out whether what you're doing is any good than you are but there's lots of things that you can do and create and that's really what your focus should be on. So there's other things in it, but I think really, ultimately, what I want to encourage people to do is to take control of this, because I see a lot of people whose lives are made miserable by self-sabotage, and that if you can get past it, you can live the life that you want to live. You can make the stuff that the world needs you to make, and that ultimately, if you can focus on the task of serving other people, that what you make is ultimately of service to others. others, and that that's why you need to do it. And that can be one of the best ways to deal with a monkey is to say, "You're right, I do suck, but people need me to do this. I need to solve this problem. I need to entertain people. I need to show them the truth. I need to lead them to their own truths, and we'll get around to beating me up later on.
Trenton Reynolds"Let's get this done." - I think that's really well said. And I think that sounds like a valuable message for anybody that's involved in creativity. And we're especially, as a group, I think you're right. We're especially susceptible to this critical voice inside our head. So I hope everybody goes out and get your book.
Sabrina Ward Harrison- Yeah, and is there a way to download it also? Can they buy it on?
Danny Gregory- Yeah, it's on Amazon. It's on the Kindle. It's going to come out, I just sold the rights to it in Turkish. So it's available in a range of different languages too over time. But it has an attractive blue cover with a yellow banana peel on it. Yes, it does.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAnd what will be the website for your podcast? How can people go to the podcast?
Danny GregoryYou know, it's, as I said, if it ever comes out, it will be on, you can go to dannygregory.com/monkey. So the slash monkey will take you to the podcast. And also I, or you can find it on my blog, which is dannygregory's blog.com.
Trenton ReynoldsFantastic. And that's it for today. Thanks for joining us and many thanks to Danny Gregory. Go to dannygregory.com/monkey. to read more about the many other things Danny is involved in and to see more of his art. We really appreciate him making time to talk with us. You can find show notes for this episode at roominthetrees.com. You can support us at patreon.com backslash room and by rating us on iTunes and by telling your friends. My brother Brent William Reynolds provided the music for this podcast and you can hear more of his music on soundcloud.com by searching for Venters Stag. Now it is time for you to shut your monkey and start making stuff. share what you're up to on Instagram by adding hashtag room in the trees to your post. Show us what you're working on. Join us next week for a conversation with Sabrina's father, John Kent Harrison. ♪