Gratitude Blooming Podcast
Inspired by nature, art and gratitude, the Gratitude Blooming co-hosts Belinda Liu and Omar Brownson bring fresh and diverse perspectives to well-being. For us, heartfulness is the new mindfulness. Gratitude Blooming was inspired by the artist Arlene Kim Suda and her 100 Days of Blooming Love art project. Hear from culture keepers, creators, healers, leaders and so many others who share their emergent practices to build the beautiful world our hearts know is possible. Please rate, review and subscribe. New conversations each week. We want to hear what you're grateful for. Learn more at www.gratitudeblooming.com
Gratitude Blooming Podcast
Reframing Fear and Embracing the Unknown: A Creative Journey
Ready to reframe fear and the unknown as fertile ground for creativity and change? Our illuminating conversation aims to inspire you to do just that. We explore the "J-curve", a trajectory of change that involves embracing failure and loss, while co-creating a future outside traditional conventions.
The dance between fear and creativity forms the heart of this episode. We invite you to consider the vital role of the unknown in collective change and how artists harness this uncertainty. While fear can stifle, it can also spark creativity when viewed through a lens of joy and playfulness. We also discuss the concept of 'enough', inviting you to examine the roots of your fears and construct metaphorical houses to safeguard your dreams.
Let's take a moment to reflect on how we protect our dreams. We focus on the power of gratitude and freedom, discussing ways to shield our dreams from fear and nurture playfulness for resilience. We bring to light the significance of creating space for failure from an Asian-American perspective and how the unfamiliar can lead to rewilding our hearts. It's more than a discussion; it's a journey into the unknown. Are you ready?
Also, listen to the wildcard song from our Garden of Healing album for inspiration.
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Hello Belinda.
Belinda Liu:Hi Omar. Arlene, it's so wonderful to have you in studio with us after your vacation.
Omar Brownson:We missed you last week. Today, an interesting conversation. We're going to be diving a little bit into fear, the unknown, and how do we hold some joy and playfulness with that? I've been really trying to lean into that joy and that play, even though there's heavy things happening COVID, not being able to smell right now. Art really has been one of those ways for me to find a creative outlet and really lean into creativity.
Belinda Liu:I'm loving that every episode. Now we're adding in a little practice. For those of you that have missed the practices, we're bringing that back in through music. So definitely stay tuned till the end, where we're going to play a song for you and really be with the essence of some of these gratitude-blaming themes through music.
Omar Brownson:Big shout out to the musician Ariel Lowe for the Garden of Joy and the Garden of Healing albums, which you can find on all streaming services. We will have a new album dropping on the fall equinox September 21st. 2nd we will have, I think this time we're going to start with a single and then the rest of the album. Then we'll be three quarters of the way through all the gratitude-blaming themes and cards, which has been pretty exciting.
Belinda Liu:Omar, I feel like a lot has been going on for you while you've been sick. I love how our bodies are kind of forced us to shut down the mind and go more inward in those times of healing, so I'd love for you to share what has emerged for you in this time of healing.
Omar Brownson:I don't remember what day it was of COVID-19, but literally this poem kind of came to me. I just reached over to my journal and grabbed it. If I were to show you the actual writing, you'd be like how do you even read that? Because I was in a almost dreamlike state and it really is about the challenging moment that we're in. And how do we hold space for that? It goes hello failure. I'm not failure, I am life. Life is creation. All that is including you. Failure Death is not failure. Death is not living. Living is not about success or failure. Living is the smell of a budding rose. Living is the taste of a homegrown strawberry. Living is the embodiment of possibility shared.
Belinda Liu:So what is that transition that you feel like you're in right now? What is the fear, would you say, for yourself, Omar?
Omar Brownson:I think it's letting go of the traditional conventions of what success or failure really looks like. I feel like we are in such economic turmoil, political turmoil, social turmoil there's so much challenge that we're facing, that's so pervasive in our society and we can't ignore some of these challenges anymore. And so, kind of coming back to creativity, like okay, how do we literally create, co-create new paths forward?
Belinda Liu:I really appreciate you being so real in this moment, because I feel like this is the part of life that's the hardest. This is like great unknown, and we've talked in our previous podcast episodes about climbing mountains what's the next mountain to climb? And I feel like right now you're in the void of you know the past is no longer the present and the future is possibility. But how do you navigate the future? In a new kind of way, like with play and joy. That is a paradigm shift, right.
Omar Brownson:You know our dear friend Alex Dorsey. She recently gave me a book around change management and really like how do we handle transitions? And in this book it really describes three parts. The first part is letting go. So you begin with the end, like how do we actually acknowledge what is going away? Then there's sort of a space of neutrality and then we can actually start talking about like how do you effectively transition to what is yet to come, right, and what does that sort of future possibility look like?
Omar Brownson:There's another kind of model called the J curve, which is like when change happens it's not nice and linear, and moving up the J, actually things get worse, right, it drops down. And this is why we resist change, because we're like, oh my God, things are getting worse, things are more difficult, and then you know, if you can manage through that difficulty, then it shoots up right, and then that kind of creates the change. But we want to resist that because we don't like failure. We don't like, you know, not winning, like who celebrates losing, right, we don't celebrate, but we are in a period of loss. And so how do we actually acknowledge those losses, like, how do we acknowledge those challenges and can we, you know, really aspire to do that with some joy, right, like with curiosity, even though there is pain, there is suffering, like how do we do that?
Omar Brownson:And I don't have the answer. You know, and I think that's what's really beautiful about getting to co-create with you, is that we're like, hey, look, yeah, there's traditional models of like influencer, podcasting, and like we're going to generate a ton of emails and ton of content and create a subscription program. And you know, and it hasn't been that for us, right, like it really has been about what's the inquiry, what's the questions, how do we listen? Right, because I think this is something that you, belinda, talk a lot about, which is like how do we not recreate the mess either? Right, like in the urgency to create change, not just replicate it. And so, you know, I'd be curious, you know, how this process has been going for you.
Belinda Liu:Well, we're, you know, preparing for that next October live podcast event with the, you know, the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, and it's been so interesting. You know how do we even partner and collaborate with others around. You know, ex-holding space right now for what is unclear. You know, we know, that there's so much that is falling away, there's so much of the old paradigms that are not working, and there's there is this sense of like division that's very present in this time of the downward spiral, as you describe, omar, and I really appreciate that we have these partners in collaboration where we can actually just be like I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. And so then, how do we hold space in the face of the unknown and really play with the unknown in that way, because it is scary to not have an answer? But isn't that the most honest truth? When you're in change, especially collective change and cultural change, like we're in right now, is like is what do we need to hold space and to name what's coming up in that?
Belinda Liu:And oftentimes, I think fear is the first.
Belinda Liu:You know, friend, that we have to, you know, make peace with.
Belinda Liu:It's like, oh, my reaction and my clenching in my body is like I want to have an answer, I want to have a plan, I want to have the goal like clear and and we're literally stepping back from that and saying, okay, we're not going to just move forward to have the answer so we can feel a little bit more comfortable.
Belinda Liu:So it's like now we're going to just lean more into that unknown and playing with that unknown even more, and that becoming the theme of our gathering in October is how do we be with our fears, which is really edgy, like who wants to like talk about that, who wants to play with that? I mean, yet it is ever present and, arlene, as an artist, I feel like you're always kind of in that world. You know, so many artists become masters of this like play with the unknown, and so I'd be curious what metaphors are really present for you right now in helping you kind of be with that, not trying to change it, not trying to fix it, but just being with that and that being the creative fuel for your work.
Arlene Kim Suda:Yeah, I feel really interested in this concept of fear and creativity. I think fear is a killer of creativity and, in particular and I think the reason why fear feels so present when I hear heard the poem, omar, that you wrote about failure. Fear of failure is like a killer of creativity, right, like if we become, I think fear is a killer of creating anything, and so I think that's a really interesting topic to talk about and I like that. I like that description you said, omar, of the J curve, right, like things are going to get worse before they get better, and I feel like that's such a great way to describe this the creative process, right Like if you're, you often feel it going down before it gets worse, and if you're not willing to stick around for that right, you know you're going to miss the up curve.
Omar Brownson:When I think.
Omar Brownson:That to me is why this failure and success is such an interesting conversation, because part of my realization recently is that you can have sort of external material success, but if the wings in which you are flying on were really driven by fear, then the success in the achievement is always going to feel ephemeral.
Omar Brownson:Right, because it's like if it, if the underlying fear, is what's driving you when you accomplish something, then you're going to be like but then it's going to go away, and so then I need to like go achieve more, because you really don't have an understanding of what is enough.
Omar Brownson:Right, because it's just like, if it's a scarcity model of like, well, I have to go to the best schools and get the best job, because I'm not sure if things will be safe, or, you know, give a certain amount of whatever it is that you feel like you need. If that's not clear, then the burning need to always achieve more never stops, right, and so I think part of the invitation is like okay, what is that fear? Where is that fear really coming from? Right? Like it because at some point you're like what is enough and like understanding what that is for yourself, and so it's been an interesting sort of inquiry to like hold space for and I feel like you're reading a book right now. That is all about like how we reimagine how we hold space for these things.
Arlene Kim Suda:One of the tools I think I use in my own creative process about. You know how do I deal with fear, and is there's this great book that I've been immersed in. It's by Gaston Bachelard and it's called the Poetics of Space, and the thing on the back cover, the quote that really caught my attention, is. He writes and this is from the book the House Shelters Daydreaming. The house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace, and so I feel like this metaphor of the house. You know, I think this is a good one for anyone in a creative practice, or, you know, really in the creative practice you need to live, right is. You know, what house are you building to protect your dreams? I feel like the metaphor of fear in the house is. He uses this metaphor of a storm being. You know something that you know the house can protect us from. So, you know, you think about all the storms that we can experience in life. Right, like what? What House have you built to allow you to protect your dreams?
Arlene Kim Suda:Here's the passage that describes the house's human resistance at the height of a storm. The house was fighting gallantly. At first, it gave its voice to its complaints. The most awful gusts were attacking it from every side at once, with evident hatred and such howls of rage that at times I trembled with fear. But it stood firm.
Arlene Kim Suda:From the very beginning of the storm, snarling winds had been taking the roof to task, trying to pull it off, to break its back, tear it into shreds, suck it off. But it only hunched over further and clung to the old rafters. Then other winds, rushing along close to the ground, charged against the wall. Everything swayed under the shock of this blow, but the flexible house stood up to the beast. No doubt it was holding firmly to the soil of the island by means of the unbreakable roots From which its thin walls of mud-coated reeds and planks drew their supernatural strength. The house clung close to me like a she-wolf and at times I could smell her odor penetrating maternally to my very heart. That night she really was my mother. She was all I had to keep and sustain me.
Belinda Liu:It's a good reminder of what we're here to do, with gratitude blooming. You know it's like how can we build a house that's strong and rooted enough to contain the multitudes of all the emotions that we feel collectively in our lives and in our communities and even on the planet, to that, to that scale? And when I heard you read this excerpt, arlene, it made me Feel like we have no control over what happens with the storm. You know, like there's so little we each have control over in that, but what we do have control over is Standing in our center in the face of that storm. And so what do we need? To feel? Like a force of stability, internally and together, and that's really what I've been appreciating about these moments to just, you know, struggle through, you know, not knowing like what does that then look like for gratitude blooming? Because we're, we know we don't want to just repeat the same models. That exists like. We have to feel that in our bones that this is fun and playful and joyful and meaningful for us.
Belinda Liu:And so there's just a lot of closing of doors and trying to see, feel our way through the next door that opens a lot of times, which is extraordinary. I think that's extremely uncomfortable. I think my biggest fear is taking a stand for something I believe in and being the only person that opened that door and being completely alone in it. I think that is my version of the fear. Failure, omar, that you named is being alone in this, this type of world of like seeing the possibility, dreaming of the possibility, but then I'm the only one that's in that room, you know, in that house, and that's really sad and lonely, and so that's probably my biggest fear right now is taking that next step and being alone.
Omar Brownson:What fear do you have, arlene? I think that Blinda framing that so well. Now you peak my curiosity to name our fears.
Arlene Kim Suda:I've been doing a lot of like healing work over the past few years to identify fears and just not not be affected by them. So you know I used to have a lot of fears around speaking in public. You know, like doing this podcast I mean performing piano used to like terrify me, you know. So I feel like I have fears like that, but you know, like big fears, you know, I'm really not sure. How about you, omar?
Omar Brownson:I don't like failure, I like winning, you know, and I think. But part of it is, I've now learned that just winning alone isn't actually enough either. Right, that it's how we live. And then you realize that life's not, you know, this is what we make of it. And so even if you sort of like, oh, this is the house, I need the job, I need the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, at some point you're like, okay, you can have all those things and it's still not enough. And so then it really sort of invites a different sort of question of like, how do I really kind of move in the world in a different way, and and and I, you know, and I, I guess, I, I appreciate, belinda, what you said, like maybe you can't control the storm, you can just control how you are in it. And and I, I guess part of my bias is like, well, how much of the storm can you shape right? Like, how much can you know we have a conversation around empathy and democracy, like we, you know, democracy feels big, but I feel like if we don't engage in that sort of bigger conversation, you know we're missing sort of an opportunity. You know, and part of this story also, you know, just reminds me.
Omar Brownson:You know, when I was in finance and it was 2008 and it was a terrible economy and I'm at the intersection of the two were sectors of finance, in real estate and I remember one of the managers was like hey, omar, just keep your head down, and in a storm, any port will do so. He was like don't rock the boat. Just, you know, keep your head down. And whether the storm, and and I was like, look, I'm not a, you know, shipping sailing expert, but my understanding is that sometimes the best thing for a boat to do is to actually go out to see, is to not like try to weather the storm on the ports where you can kind of get slammed up but, you know, against the docs or whatever, but to actually just go where the storm is not right and go out to see sometimes. And so that was really how I, you know, however, many years ago that was now like 15, almost years ago kind of was like no, let me face the storm by actually going out to see.
Omar Brownson:I think now it's an interesting question is more inward than outward of like. What does that look like? I'd be curious if we pulled a gratitude blooming card. You know as this question of like, how do we face fear, what would come up? Or maybe the question is what kind of house are you building?
Arlene Kim Suda:what's coming up for me, to Omar, with hearing what you're saying, is I feel like, in the metaphor of the book, it's really about not protecting. You don't want to protect the fear, you know. You don't want to protect what you're scared of, you want to protect the dream. That's that, that is the core of it, right? So, and I think that relates to to you, your, your fear that you mentioned Belinda like about being alone, like you don't want to protect that fear, you want to protect the dream, right? So I feel like that's a really different, it's a you know, it's a different inquiry, right? So? I don't know, I just wanted to make sure you know we have that in mind when we you know how do we protect our dreams?
Arlene Kim Suda:I love it, I think it's protecting your dreams so, arlene, with that, give us a.
Belinda Liu:Tell us which card I'm going to start scrolling.
Arlene Kim Suda:I think maybe the last row number 36, the sweet pea.
Omar Brownson:We left this wild card for you to imagine your own words of wisdom and gratitude. I almost feel like your question, arlene, which is like how do we protect the dream and not the fear? Is the? Those are the words of wisdom actually right, like we can choose where do we direct our attention? This is, I would say, a quarter.
Omar Brownson:The gratitude to the practice is like we are what we notice and sometimes like, and if we don't pause to really acknowledge the invisible, right like, and sometimes the invisible is like what we take for granted or what we don't want to acknowledge, right, I think that was like for me. My poem was like I don't like acknowledging failure. It's not fun, but the thing is is that if I don't acknowledge it and I'm still held by it, or I'm limited by, I'm limited by what I don't see and I'm limited by what I can't acknowledge, and so it's better to sort of deal with those sort of shadow feelings, emotions, those fears, so that you can release them right? There's a great Zen saying like the best way to let an ambition go is to achieve it.
Omar Brownson:Right is like let me just acknowledge this thing, and then I'm not bound by it anymore.
Belinda Liu:Well, the word that comes up for me is freedom, because our dreams are ours. There's nobody that can take that away from us or control that. You know it's ours. And when I think about the sweet pea and how it grows on the land it is, you cannot pull that thing out of the ground. It is so rooted in it, in what it's planted in, and it grows around and it's wild and it is free, Like you can't tell it what to do. It is going to just do what it wants to do. And yeah, I love that feeling of what is it? To hold space for the dream that we each carry?
Arlene Kim Suda:And maybe that's where the play comes into. Maybe the playfulness like knowing, accessing that playfulness is a way to protect the dream right? So I do feel like there's something about play that can help us weather the storms that we experience in life.
Omar Brownson:And as soon as you said that, arlene, I came, the image of dancing in the rain came to me, right Like. So, even in a storm, what are we going to do? Do you like hunker down? And you know like, I got the umbrella and I got to get like the Gore-Tex, you know jacket and I got to get like the boots and I got to like. You know, am I like fortressing against this thing, or I'm like I'm just going to get wet and I'm going to dance in the rain, like, and I think that to me is the invitation that we're constantly being given.
Omar Brownson:Whenever I look at the artwork on this one, I can't help but see barbed wire, for some reason, like the way that the line kind of comes across and there's like these, like sort of periodic, sort of look like spines and their leaves, I assume. But it's sort of like, in some ways, like our minds can create fear and be like oh, I see barbed wire, like, but when we look at it we're like, oh, it's actually just a flower, it's just a plant, it's only my fear that's projecting this sort of image of barbed wire. And so like really being conscious of like, what are we projecting? What are we seeing, and are we seeing through the eyes of fear, or are we seeing through the eyes of hope and dreaming?
Belinda Liu:Beautiful. Do we feel like we need to want to pick another card for our listeners, or is this kind of the card I mean this to me every time we get a wild card is almost an exclamation mark of like, lean more into that wild unknown, you know, like we can't think our way out of where we're at right now. We have to feel our way through.
Omar Brownson:Yeah, I feel like this is a good card for the community as well. This week, let's go with the wild card.
Belinda Liu:Perfect. So what is the song that we're going to play for our listeners as the closing practice, inspired by the sweet pea, omar, I know you've been really listening to the Gratitude Blooming Albums as a way to really feel your way through the kind of edges of this unknown time that you're in, of releasing the what your mind has, you know, been so good at. You know it's like surrendering to the, dreaming more with your heart.
Omar Brownson:So let's see here I'm trying to remember if we have the wild card, so let me just pull it up here. So in the Garden of Joy we have yes, we have the Tiger Lily wild card. So how's that for close enough?
Belinda Liu:Sounds good.
Omar Brownson:Here we go, the��� reporters out there. All right, you, you.
Belinda Liu:You as you listen to that song of the wild card. Just notice how it feels in your body to be with that unknown right now. How does that music help you connect even deeper Marlene and Omar? How did that music feel in you as you listen to it?
Omar Brownson:What I really appreciated about this song is the spaciousness that I felt in it, that there was lots of room. It wasn't like this song. It's like filled with a bunch of different elements going on. I had this very openness and repetitive rhythm to it. I feel like that invited me to make room. There's more spaciousness. I think that's what the wild card is about.
Omar Brownson:I think part of these things is I'm working on this class for Simon Sinek's platform on mastering human connections in the 21st century. How do we give ourselves room to fail, room to explore the wilderness? That really comes from all the way back in college, when I was in Norway at the World Wilderness Congress, hearing the keynote speaker, an 18-year-old, say that the connection between youth and the wilderness is that both are uncultivated. How do we give ourselves room to not feel like, oh, we have to be highly cultivated and polished and everything needs to be put together, which also is a very Asian American feeling? It's like, no, it's okay to be rough and uncultured. A little bit of wild is actually or maybe a lot of bit of wild is really important. We're so often focused on retrain the mind, but about how do we rewild the heart? I feel like the unknown creates room for that.
Arlene Kim Suda:I'm still getting familiar with the music, but it did feel calming in such a powerful way. I listened to a lot of classical music so I think you can get caught up in a lot of the complexity, but this music gets to the core of something, so I was a bit mesmerized after listening to it.
