#204 Storytelling techniques, strategic self-care, and celebrating the small wins, with Lisa Towles.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

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Please note, while an effort is made to provide an accurate transcription, errors and omissions may be present. No part of this transcription can be referenced or reproduced without permission.

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Lisa Towles  0:00  
Here's what I think is a really important word, permission. I think this is terribly important to fiction and nonfiction writers is giving yourself permission to explore. Having having the kind of, of ego maturity so that you can allow yourself to write something that's not very good to allow yourself to be a beginner at something to allow yourself to continue learning into start something new.

Agi Keramidas  0:35  
You are listening to personal development mastery podcast where you will find both the inspiration to grow and the actions to implement towards your next level. I am your host Agi Keramidas and my mission is to inspire you to stand out and live your best life. I interview thought leaders, authors, entrepreneurs, spiritual teachers, exceptional people who will inspire you to improve your life and offer through their wisdom actions you can take and implement. Tune in for two new episodes each week and make sure you follow the podcast to get the episodes as soon as they are released.

In today's show, I am thrilled to speak with Lisa Towles. Lisa, you are an award winning crime novelist, a blogger, graphic designer and musician living in the San Francisco Bay area. You are a passionate speaker and blogger on the topics of writing personal mastery and strategic self care. While you also work full time in the tech industry. You have seven crime novels in print with a new title forthcoming later on in 2022. And you are passionate about storytelling, strategic self care, and helping people. Lisa, welcome to the show. I'm delighted to speak with you today.

Lisa Towles  2:10  
Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here to Good morning. Well, good morning for me, good afternoon for you.

Agi Keramidas  2:16  
It's great to have you here. And it's I believe it's a very important topic that we will discuss today. And that'll be storytelling and some aspects of it. But before we go there, I wanted to ask a couple of things so that we can get to know you a little bit better. So Okay. My question a very simple question really, is, when did you start writing? And why did you start writing? I know, it's it's a simple question. Not necessarily simple answer. But I'm curious,

Lisa Towles  2:56  
and probably different for everyone you ask, right? We all have kind of a different path. And I think for me, I've always been a writer. I remember being a child very young, and it would be a snow day. So a snow day I grew up in New England. And a snow day is a wonderful thing if you're a child. So a snow day means there's so much snow, the school bus can't pick you up, and you have the day off. So it's this wonderful, celebratory jailbreak feeling. And there's always a question for parents, oh my god, what am I going to do with them today? So, um, so my mom, my, my wonderful mom would only give us 30 minutes of TV. And she would say you have to find something else to do with your time, you're not going to sit in front of the TV all day, you have to you have 30 minutes, so use it wisely. And we would say what are we supposed to do? And she would say play a game, write, write a story, create some art, something like that. My parents are musicians and and I grew up in a family of, of musicians and they really encouraged creativity and I used to write stories and I I had no trouble doing it. And I loved it. It was just this this world of make believe I used to love reading stories to I still love reading. But But I wrote stories back then. And they I don't know if they were any good but they were my escape. And that's really what I bring to my fiction writing. Now fiction writing is escape and I think good fiction writing really should give the reader a mechanism for transportation so they can read your story enter your world and go someplace fantastic and forget everything. So I've been doing that really all my life.

Agi Keramidas  4:53  
I like there was one thing that a phrase you used that about make belief and it made me realise how many people have completely I mean, adult adults have completely forgotten that element of make belief and they might even just associated with children, that it's not something that we do. So give me a comment about this make belief and its importance, you know, in our, in our everyday life really and doing things that we, we want?

Lisa Towles  5:32  
It's, it's a great question. And I think make believe is really the mechanism for a lot of art. Not just writing but but a lot of art. So I think of make believe, as the mechanism for creativity in general. And, and what is make believe, really, you're, you're pretending that you're going somewhere else, or that you are someone else. And it's a way of kind of forgetting your current concerns or challenges, and you get taken away to another place in another world. And whether you're comparing what you're reading, whether it's fiction, or nonfiction, to your own life and own experience, I think isn't as relevant as you allowing yourself to go there, and to be transported by whatever you're reading. So So for me, that sense of make believe, is the element of escape that drives me to read. And it drives me to write stories, I want to explore different things. And I just kind of let my mind go there. I mean, then the craft of writing, of course, comes in to sort of like, you know, organise it and make that story into something publishable, which is a completely different path, and trajectory. But the Create phase, it's it's just terribly important to all writers, and especially to me in my creative soul, just allowing myself to kind of make stuff up.

Agi Keramidas  7:09  
I love how you said, Ken, I want to ask you specifically with that, because I'm intrigued about something you said, pretending to be and so when you do it, when you make belief when you pretend to be whatever it is that you are making belief. Do you do it? Like do you close your eyes and go there? Do you do it while you do other things? Is that a mental Amin as a mental process? Is that something separate from other stuff for you? Do you combine it with something else? I hope? Hopefully it makes sense what I'm asking.

Lisa Towles  7:45  
Mm hmm. Yeah, I think I understand what you're asking the way I do it, every writer does it differently. I have a work in progress. Right now. It's another thriller novel, it's about three quarters done. And as I start writing a new book, I create something visual for myself. So I have lots of different ways of manifesting the story in reminding myself of what I'm doing. And where I'm going. One of the things that I do is I create a PowerPoint slide deck, where each character is a different slide. And I map the characters to different actors on TV, in movies. So that way, I, I kind of envisioned that that character would be played by, I don't know, my ken Brana Mel Gibson, I mean, like, like, whoever it is that that really reminds you of how this character is. And I relate my main character to an actor that I know. And that I've seen in movies, because that that way, I know how they talk. I know how they think about things. I know how they deal with challenges, how they express excitement. And so when it comes to writing dialogue, it's a no brainer, I know exactly what they would say and what they would do. So I have that visual. And I go on Google images, and I find images of them. And I don't send this anywhere. I just keep it from myself. And I do that for every character. So that's really fun. And another thing that I do is I find some sort of representative music that captures this. I mean, I do make a playlist I usually make like a YouTube playlist of, of different different compositions that are kind of like the vibe of the story, different parts of the story, but then I also have kind of like one sort of thematic, Anthem like piece of music that represents the vibe of the story. So I write crime thrillers and so think of the soundtrack to like the Jason Bourne movies or something. That's exactly the vibe that I'm going for.

Agi Keramidas  9:59  
That's brilliant. Thank you that's it's fascinating to know as techniques, and I was thinking how this could be, especially the first thing you said about picking an actor and having a visual person that could really help very much I get it, even though I don't write like fiction. But still, I think I was thinking of a way I could implement something like that when you're doing, for example, when you're planning your future, or when you're setting some goals for yourself, because there is also that process of creation and making belief in a different way. But, you know, I was I was trying to think of a way that it could be used in a different settings.

Lisa Towles  10:51  
Yeah, I think we're going to talk today about not only we're going to talk about storytelling techniques, and one of the ones that I don't want to get too ahead of you. But one of the things I was going to talk about is visualisation of the finished product. So you were just talking about how would you apply this kind of more broadly. So if you're, if you're an author, and you're working to be a best selling author, for example, you could post images of things like the New York Times Book Review logo in your workspace, or even the phrase best selling author as a visual reminder of where you want to go. As a business leader, if you're working on being invited to be a keynote speaker, if that's something that you really want to do. And you want that to be the next step in the evolution of your career as a public speaker, post images of other keynote speakers on a stage in your workplace with lights on them pictures of TED Talk speakers. That's one thing. That's one thing that I do about kind of keeping myself motivated is I keep images that represent what I want to do and what I want to create and how I want to evolve in my workspace.

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That's, that's fantastic. And thank you for that. And actually, as I will use that as a bridge then to one of the the the things that we wanted to discuss, which is using some of these storytelling techniques that you as a novelist use and taking them. I mean, whether it was an is an entrepreneur or communicates and the thing in that second category, pretty much every single person belongs to because we have to do that and using some of this storytelling techniques that you use as a novelist to be able to share our methods in a more compelling way, if you want. And before I ask you about specific techniques, I want to ask you what's so important what's so powerful about storytelling?

Lisa Towles  14:41  
I keep thinking of the word audience. You know, we we all have. We all have a mission. We all feel driven by something that we don't consciously decide in our brains, our heart, our soul decides what that mission is. So I feel compelled to write stories and to help other people write stories and help them free blocks and limitations to their creativity. Your your soul might be guiding you to be a facilitator and a host to host meaningful conversations in the world and get people to collaborate. And you're, and you're a wonderful host. And I can tell that this isn't just your job and something, something you do for an economic reason. It's something that you're driven to do. And storytelling, I think, is a way of bridging what's what's in our hearts and our souls to something that we can make meaningful in the world to bring value to other people. So I see storytelling as kind of like, a mechanism for us to bring our authentic selves to everything we do, but also a bridge to connect us with other people. And my goodness, what what could be more important than that, especially in the world right now, fostering those connections through storytelling, I think is very meaningful work.

Agi Keramidas  16:11  
It most certainly is. And I will share with you, Lisa, that a few years back not very long ago, three, four years back, maybe I had completely, I was completely unaware of this fact of storytelling, I thought it was something for authors or something goodwill, had nothing to do with, you know, your day to day communication, even though I always admired and was compelled by people who were sharing stories in a great way. I never thought of it that I was compelled to specifically the stories. In other words, I hadn't realised how important it is, if it was, through my journey, and what it brought me that I realised how important it is and how someone listening or the audience, the word you used earlier, gets thrown and connected with the story with the characters, rather than a way of let's say teaching or lecturing, or other things you can use, it's a very different approach to use a story. And if you use it in, in a in a way that is I will actually leave that to you rather than me trying to explain what's the best way to say no, I

Lisa Towles  17:36  
know you're doing a great job, I understand exactly where you're going with that, you know, if we're talking about keynote speakers, so if you picture someone who was who has been hired to be a keynote speaker, that person has a message and the way that they deliver that message made them be invited to be to be a speaker. So now they have their story. And they have the audience, how are they going to reach that audience, you know, you, as you said, standing up to be standing up at a pulpit and and talking like you're giving a lecture and teaching people things, you know, you might not reach people that way, the way that you can reach people, is by making them feel like they're like you. That way you're decreasing that separation, there's not like a sense of high and low and me and them is more of fostering a sense of us, or the collective human experience. So talking about a story, relaying a story from your personal life of how you solved a problem, or a funny story. Humour is is incredibly compelling. When you're building a bridge to people. I think it's a way that you can engender your audience to feel like they're close to you to feel like they're like you to feel like we all have a universal story. So I think it's a way of bringing people in.

Agi Keramidas  19:06  
Absolutely. I like very much how you describe it? Do you want to share with with me some more techniques. Now I'm very but I like because you started sharing things that can be applied. So I would like to hear a few more whatever you believe is relevant or very important.

Lisa Towles  19:27  
Okay. Okay, so we talked a little bit about about music, music that sort of keeps you in the zone, you know, what is the zone that's whatever your most inspired state of mind is I write crime thrillers so I like fast paced instrumental music. And that's what I listened to when I'm writing to kind of put me to sort of help me concentrate and immerse myself in the story. And then we also talked about visualising the finished product imagery in your workspace to keep you on Target and motivated. Couple other things that that I really liked doing is something called empty cup. So I haven't, yeah, so I have an empty cup file that I keep on my desktop. And it's a way for me to write for 15 minutes when I first wake up. So I can't I'm not one of those writers that gets up at six in the morning and writes for two hours working on my in progress novel No, I, I'm an I'm a night owl, I write from like, 10 to 11. At night 10 to midnight, I have a writing group that meets at 10pm. And I definitely it takes me takes me a while for my create that that creativity for fiction writing to wake up. What I do with the empty cup, is I mean, sometimes I do this at night before I start writing to is, it's a great way to empty my mind of residual dream imagery, anxieties, worries, challenges, really just a brain dump to kind of clear the slate for the day. You know, it allows the energy and the excitement of things that are going on in my day to filter in and to fill me up. And so that I'm not bogged down with any residual thoughts from the previous day, any challenges or concerns. So I just write for 15 minutes as kind of like a journal I'm typing I'm not handwriting. But that's my empty cup exercise. And another thing that works really well for either fiction or nonfiction writers is something called timed writing practice for creativity. So what that can do is it can help you maintain fluidity, and generate new ideas. And I learned this practice through one of my one of my mentors. She's a writer, Natalie Goldberg. She's a fiction and a nonfiction writer. And she wrote the book writing down the bones. And I read this book when I was 20. And I wrote my first note wrote and completed my first novel, right after I read that book, it was it just really opened me up. So the timed writing practice is is a great way to keep out your internal editor. So here's how it works. If you're going to do a timed writing exercise, you're going to put on a timer start with five minutes. Here's the only rule you can't. And you have to do this handwriting too, you can't do it typing. So you have a pen, you have a journal or some kind of a notebook. And the one rule is you have to keep writing for five minutes, you can't stop because if you stop that's when our internal editor will come in and say oh, that's not very good. No one will ever want to publish that you didn't cross that t you didn't dot that I that's not a complete sentence. What are you doing, you know how the internal editor kind of gets in. So if you're doing a timed exercise, and you don't stop writing continuously for five minutes, there's no ingress for that internal editor, it can't get in. And that's why this is powerful. And you don't even need to necessarily go back and read what you wrote. It's it's the idea of allowing yourself five minutes to continue writing and if you don't know what to write, you know, we all have a fear of the empty page fiction writers nonfiction writers. Write the word write, WRI te just write that word over and over and and you might think that you'll be doing that for five minutes, but you won't, you might start there or you might start with writing a recipe for lasagna you know if you can't think of anything just make something up and what you will find is once once you start writing the thoughts will come in the ideas will come and once you do this for two or three days I guarantee you will feel like five minutes Is it over already no I need more time and you'll want to do it for more time so it's a very powerful exercise for kind of freeing your creative mind and heart and you can you can see yep please

Agi Keramidas  24:11  
it's it's good there were there were some things that came up while you were describing this. The the key I will start with the scary thing that came up was Jack Nicholson typing all work and no play you know this when you started saying you will write write write for five minutes. But I think that the exercise I would I would call it like a brain dumping in a way because I don't know how much sense it will make when you try to read. Obviously when your internal editor as you call it doesn't make corrections it's it's going to be confused to us. This words rather than anything else,

Lisa Towles  25:01  
that's right. And I don't think you're going for perfection and you're not know and you're not going for, for a finished product that's going to be good that you could show to someone else or even use for something. I think the point is to use it as a way, the way I describe it to students and novices is imagine you go into Okay, so imagine that you're walking in the woods, you're just walking in the woods to explore to have some to have some space and some quiet reflection time. You see through a clearing, this old house looks like a haunted house looks like no one's lived there for literally 100 years. So you go into this house, you're drawn to it, you know, the sun is shining, it's there are beautiful trees around it. But this house is decrepit, it literally looks like you can blow and blow it down. So you walk in, there's no door, you walk in this house, you're looking around. And there's a kitchen sink, where a kitchen used to be, there's a faucet, and you you turn on the faucet and it doesn't really turn and you think you know you're struggling to turn it and finally you turn that faucet, it kind of creeks and you turn it a little bit more, and no water comes out at first and then eventually like brown rusty water comes out dirty disgusting water and you leave the water running, you leave the faucet on and you're exploring the house some more. And then you come back to look at it. And after the faucets been on a while the water runs clear. And then after the water runs clear, the water starts to flow more consistently too. So I think turning on your creativity is about just practising it, you know, like any muscle practice that that that fluidity comes with repetition. So the timed writing practice is really like just turning the crank on that water valve. So that water flows out of it every time you turn it on.

Agi Keramidas  27:07  
That's a great way to describe it. And it completely makes sense to me. And I also find extraordinary what you say very also useful apart from you know, writing as such, if you're writing a book, it's support. If you're writing content, or you write your emails short. I mean your your campaign emails or any creative thing that you are about to create heaven allow yourself the opportunity to, to clear the muddy waters that might come in the beginning is I can I can think of myself, I will tell you what came to my mind personally doing it rather than trying to write the first paragraph of my email as it would be just spent the first few minutes but I think whatever else and then write the first paragraph. So thank you for that. That will certainly use that. It's very actionable.

Lisa Towles  28:09  
Exactly. You can use the empty cup exercise and it doesn't have to be for five minutes. It could be for one minute. And and you are you are definitely a writer OGGY even if you're not, even if you're not writing novels, you write content, you are doing nonfiction writing all the time. You are a different kind of storyteller, but you are absolutely a storyteller. So yeah, I think this applies to nonfiction writers and fiction writers. And there's another part of the times writing practice is once you start doing it, and you get more comfortable with, Okay, five minutes of writing go. The next part of it to kind of scale it up a little bit could be something that I do. And it's called random writing prompts for fluidity and flow. So I have one person that I write with in we trade writing prompts. So he might give me a prompt and say, okay, you've just bought a new house and you walk in the house, you walk in the front door, and you see a man lying on the floor. Go. So you don't know if it's a dead body. You know, I write crime thrillers so that that's naturally where I go. Or it could be someone who it could be a caretaker that just collapsed and they're sick or something like that. And then I give him a prompt to and, and it's just like a kind of like a phrase, and you have to write something for five or 10 minutes just based on that. It can be dialogue, it can be reporting it like you're writing an article in a newspaper, it can be like a journal entry, and you don't have to read it back and forth. And if you're doing this for yourself, just you can go to websites and look for writing prompts. There are tonnes of websites that have writing prompts on them. And a prompt is really just the door into something. And I think I think The goal is to be able to read a writing prompt and write for five or 10 minutes on that even if it's not very good, even if you're not showing it to anyone, just to be able to do that, to have that sense of fluidity and flow, and exploration. And here's what I think is a really important word, permission to get I think this is terribly important to fiction and nonfiction writers is giving yourself permission to explore. Having having the kind of, of ego maturity so that you can allow yourself to write something that's not very good to allow yourself to be a beginner at something to allow yourself to continue learning in to start something new, even if it's not going to be good, even if it's not going to be perfect. And I say that word permission, because I think perfectionism plagues so much, and saps so much happiness and joy, and it's something that I have really worked hard at, at moving away from in my life is is not being perfect and being okay, with not being perfect. Sorry, that was a very long answer.

Agi Keramidas  31:12  
No, that you brought up many things. For me, I will start with what I just said, without a big Tofik perfectionism. For me, I say sometimes I'm a recovering, perfectionist, I realised that it was, it doesn't exist. So trying to aim for that puts you in a circle of failure, because you can never reach that. But perfection is my size. You said the the phrase giving yourself permission to explore. And I think that's very, extremely important. I will say for anything, not just writing, but anything new, or any idea that might come to us and I have experienced it before, I'm sure that you haven't a bet that the listener can also relate when you do have an idea or something that comes up. But you let it be you do not explore it because you don't know what will happen and so on. The thing is, though, that giving yourself permission exactly as you said it to explore it. You never know what that might lead to end exploring is exactly that you don't have to commit, you don't have to do anything else. Just dip your toe in it, explore do something that will move you towards that direction. And what I have found, Lisa, personally, and I have heard is that when you do that, magic can happen afterwards. So it all starts with curiosity to explore something and allowing yourself or permission, as you said, so

Lisa Towles  32:55  
I love that word magic. Yes. I love that word magic. Yeah. And I think if you're brave, and if you allow yourself magic can happen. Definitely. And you know what one of your other guests OGGY talked about this in December, your guests, Scott Campbell, what what a wonderful speaker. And he talked about this too about bringing about the need for authenticity, which you were just talking about to bringing your most authentic self to everything you do. And I think we're afraid I think as humans, we're afraid to bring our authentic self a lot of times because we feel like we have to be perfect in and polished and buttoned up and be absolutely flawless in our execution of everything. And it's hard to get to a place where where you believe and you trust that you can be yourself and still be still be accepted, still be loved, still be supported.

Agi Keramidas  33:51  
I think that's one of the biggest realisations that a human can made at some point to that. That's in a way, that's the whole point to actually be authentic and be who you are, rather than who anything or anyone else expects you to be. It's, of course, it's not easy, easily done, depending. But it's a very big topic. And actually, I will use that lease as a little bridge here to change gear and ask you about a different topic that I know you're very passionate about. That's self care or strategic self care techniques that you mentioned. So I think that's again something that maybe it is misunderstood in a way people think sometimes the word self care could bring someone's mind you know, going to have a massage or or you know, going to a spa for treatment, but I would certainly like to hear your thoughts about them. portance of search and self care for entrepreneurial writers who are busy people like we all are, and some more show techniques or what it is that you recommend to achieve that.

Lisa Towles  35:16  
Well, you mentioned massages, and I think massages are wonderful self care, I'm definitely not knocking those. And I think you're right. You know, when people think of the phrase self care, they think of a yoga retreat, or, or massage or something. And I think there's kind of a broader context of what I call strategic self care for your write for writers, visionaries, business leaders, I guess I've feel like there are some things that we humans are routinely not doing. And they're easy things to do. And by not doing them, they keep us from enjoying the journey. And there are very easy and obvious fixes that people can start doing today. So I have I've a few things that, that I talked about. One of them is celebrating wins. So this might seem like a no brainer, but you know, I and especially celebrating small wins, you know, it's it's easy to celebrate a big win that that's an obvious cadence in your life, you, you you win an award, you get a new job, you get a raise you you know, like, like something like that you buy a new house, you know, you're looking for yours, and you find a new house and you buy it, and you close on it and you move in. Those are the obvious ones. The The bad thing about big wins is that there might be a really, really long time in between big wins, what do you do in between that our hearts need to be fed a steady diet of encouragement and care. So, so celebrating small wins, gives gives you that those little bits of encouragement. So what's an example of a small win, if you're a writer, you might be working, you might have written a book, your first book, and you're trying to get a publisher. So you might be going the route where you want to get signed by a literary agent, so that they can open the door to a larger publisher for you. So if you're a writer looking for an agent, you will send like what's called a query letter. And maybe like five chapters of your book to several agents, a small win might be an agent writes back and says, says this looks really good. Please send me the whole manuscript. That's, that's called a manuscript request. That's absolutely a small win. And it's worth celebrating because you might send 100 letters like this to different agents before you get one of those. It's it's very, it's, it's a really big deal when it happens. And it should be celebrated. And what are some things that you can do to celebrate them, buy yourself a present, tell someone about it, also sit in and reflect and say, Wow, I really reached a goal here, this is awesome, I feel really good about this. Just even saying those words to acknowledge it for to ourselves can be very, very powerful. And buying yourself a gift, something you know, indulgent that you wouldn't normally normally do, or you could put something up on your refrigerator, you know, like to like, print out the email that you got from the agent on your refrigerator. So every time you go in the kitchen, you see a reminder that you went for something and you and you got a favourable response.

Another thing that I think can be really, really important is grieving your losses. And this is something that I don't see a lot of people talking about. I mean, there's a lot online about self care. But a lot of it is like you the way that you characterised it yoga retreats and in massages that and both of those are wonderful, but grieving your losses. I think, you know, and I'm not talking about over indulging in this and spending a week wallowing in grief. But I'm talking five minutes of reflecting and really feeling your disappointment and honouring yourself for putting yourself out there and going for something and comforting yourself caring for yourself for a moment before you move forward. Again, you know, I think we're so conditioned as humans to you know, the phrase get back up on your horse. I think we don't even get off of our horse we don't even allow ourselves to, to think about it. It's like Go Go, go go for the next thing. Go for the next thing. And I think that motivation, and that attraction to the to the path forward is wonderful. And it really shows your drive. But I think pausing to pausing a moment to reflect and say, Wow, that really burned well. I'm really disappointed. I went for something and I didn't get the response that I wanted and I don't feel good about it. That's what Scott Campbell was talking about. I think bringing that reality, bringing that bringing that authenticity to your experience. And when you do that, I think the benefits of that are far and wide, to, to your relationship to yourself as a writer, as a business leader, as a visionary, you know, so that way you're acknowledging, you know, when there's kind of a dip in your experience. And then you're also acknowledging, you know, when there's a high point, even if it's just a small high point, you know, you're you're, you're maintaining a closeness with yourself to acknowledge both of those things. And then if I have time to talk about one more, the last one is saying no, this is, this is, I think, such an important topic, it's been such an important topic for me. And I'm not saying that I do all of these things, I don't do all of these things, I still need reminders to do them. And I've had to spend a lot of time with my own self discovery. Working on being okay with, with writing things that aren't very good, you know, for that exploration exercise, I work, I still work very closely with myself about giving myself permission and trusting and saying no, has been it's, it's, it's very difficult. One thing you can do if you're not comfortable saying no, is saying not now. So not now is not necessarily No, it's also not necessarily Yes. And and I think it's a great kind of path forward. So I think saying, I think saying node demonstrates self respect, you know, that we have an awareness of our capacity. So sure, we all have deadlines, big projects, deliverables that we're working toward, and that can be good that pushed, but it's not sustainable as an everyday practice. So, you know, I mean, like, maybe, maybe you feel like saying, No, is not something that you need to work on that you have those good boundaries already. But I think for other people, certainly, for me, at certain parts of my life, I took on too much, you know, even even now, you know, I mean, so, so talking about strategic self care for writers or for business leaders, you know, like, I feel such a passion, really a calling for helping writers on their journey, and I didn't really have a lot of help for me on the beginning of my journey. So if I can use my experience and help a beginning writers start their journey off. Well, that brings so much meaning to my heart. I love that. So when I get invited to speak about this, it's hard for me to say no, because I love it. I love it so much. But I'm learning about my capacity and and my limits. If I say yes to too much, there's not enough left of the authentic me at the end of the day. And if I'm not taking care of my creative heart, and my body and my mind, I can't give any good to anybody else.

Agi Keramidas  43:03  
Thank you very much for this was a wonderful answer. Very comprehensive, I will reiterate very briefly my own words, as you said, there were those three practices you described of self care. So the first one was to celebrate the small wins, and I liked, you use the phrase to feed our heart with encouragement. And I think that made an impression the way you said it. The second one was grieving our losses. And that word grieving, I liked how you described about not just reflecting, but also feeling the disappointment of the loss. Exactly. While at the same time being self compassionate and not beating ourselves up about the show. It was, it is it is a very great method, if you want of self care. And the third one you said was saying no or not now, which is a big skill, a very important skill. But I believe we need to realise at some point, it's, you know, the analogy, they always say about the mask in the aeroplane, when the air pressure drops, you have to put it on yourself first. So if you keep on saying yes to everyone else, make sure that you don't say no to yourself. So you have to say no to other stuff, rather than yourself. So that was like a small, let's say summary of some of the things you said thank you very much,

Lisa Towles  44:40  
Lisa. And I think I think you bring up a great point. OGGY you you talked about self compassion and not beating ourselves up. And I think that's so important in the context of grieving losses. And everything, you know, it gets back to that topic of perfectionism. We went for something and we didn't get it and that's Sting's for a minute. And I think it's okay to acknowledge, well, that stinks, that that hurts, I'm going to go for something else, I'm going to, I'm going to re revise my plan and, and have kind of a slightly different path forward. But yeah, that doesn't feel good and reminding ourselves that we don't have to be perfect. And maybe, you know, the thing that we didn't get that we are going for wasn't perfectly in alignment with the next version of ourselves of where our soul wants us to go. So that that's okay, so I love I love that you brought up self compassion, that's, that's terribly important.

Agi Keramidas  45:35  
It's important, and I brought it up. Because it is something that I personally, you know, many of the things that come to my mind are things that are currently my experience, or I'm working on them. So it's these conversations, and I'm digressing now, they really allow me, and then my guests many times with the questions to discover some other aspects about ourselves. But anyway, that's again, a big topic. Lisa, I would like to start wrapping this wonderful conversation up and I have some quickfire questions to ask you. So tell me first, what does personal development mean to you?

Lisa Towles  46:18  
Personal Development, what it means to me is looking inside. Feeling that, that permission, and summoning the courage to look inside yourself to uh, to look inside yourself at what you are, what you're not, and what you want to be, and feeling comfortable with all of it? Great question. I love that question.

Agi Keramidas  46:42  
Great answer!

Lisa Towles  46:43  
Can I Can I ask you the question now? What does personal development mean to you?

Agi Keramidas  46:48  
Thank you for shares. That's not that's something that not many of my guests have done. But so I congratulate you. So for me, is, in a similar way that what you said is discovering who we truly are inside and discovering sometimes, or I used to think that discovering implies breeding stuff and building and building and growing, like development as the word describes. But I realised that that's only a part of it, there is another even bigger part of which which is removing the elements that we have, which have been acquired that they're not Petrolia show. Again, it's similar to you go into our authentic self, who we really are discovering that and hopefully, leaving that so that's what Well, for me, personal development is the journey towards there because I think it's a journey and not an endpoint. Thank you for asking me. So my turn, okay. Just a hypothetical question. Going back, if you could go back in time and meet your 18 year old self? What's one piece of advice you would give? Oh, I

Lisa Towles  48:09  
love that question. I feel like I could talk for an hour about this question. And I don't think I have an hour left. What would I tell my 18 year old self? Well, really, by and large, what my 18 year old self didn't have was any trust whatsoever, that I could be myself in the world. I felt like I had to be someone else. I felt like I had to be perfect. I had to be a perfect version of this role and that role. And I had to constantly prove myself, I felt like I had to constantly prove myself my value, my worth my contribution, my skills. And yeah, what I would tell myself is that you can be exactly who you are, and still be loved and accepted and supported in the world. So stop wasting time and start creating. That's what I would say.

Agi Keramidas  49:08  
Thank you. And, Lisa, I'm always very big on giving to the listener, one actionable item, I know that we've already you've already given them quite a few during our conversation. But as a summary, if you were to give to the listener right now, one action of light and something they can implement straight away. What's What would you tell him or her?

Lisa Towles  49:32  
If I can have if I can have two I'll give one. That's a storytelling technique. And one that's a strategic self care technique. Is that okay? Okay, so for the storytelling techniques of the ones that we talked about, I think, I think empty cup is, is a really good exercise you can do it doesn't have to be at six o'clock in the morning. It can be you know, just before you have to write anything, you're writing it article you're writing a LinkedIn article, a blog post, you're writing an email to an important recipient talking about a challenge that you're working through having a, just an empty cup, so that you can just kind of write and free up your mind for five minutes, is can be really helpful. And then strategic self care, I would say, of what we talked about celebrating small wins, I think small wins often get forgotten, and we don't acknowledge them. And a long period of time goes by where we're not getting any encouragement or any, any support for what we're doing. And I think celebrating those small wins, being able to define what a win is, what a small win is something worthy of celebrating, I think that's one part of it. But then also acknowledging it and doing something nice for yourself and appreciating yourself to keep your creative heart fed so that you're excited to get the next small wins.

Agi Keramidas  50:59  
That's fantastic. Thank you, Lisa. How can people connect with you and find out more about you? And also please share with us where we would? What about your latest book that is out?

Lisa Towles  51:11  
Okay. So my website is LisaTowles.com And my latest book, it was published back in November of 2021. It's called 95. And it's a crime thriller. It's published by by indies United publishing. And I'm delighted that indies United is also going to be publishing my next book coming out in June, that book is called Hot House. So 95 is a standalone thriller. And hothouse is the first of a three book series. And I'm really excited about hot house, especially because I've never written a series before. This is the first series. I've written lots of books. And this is the first time I've actually written the series. And I'm pretty happy with it. So this is book one of that series. And then there are two more that'll be published later on. But But yeah, I'm excited to be working with a lovely small publisher indies united. And I really feel their support behind me and, and I'm really excited about that path.

Agi Keramidas  52:20  
And that will, I will put your website link in the shownotes. Liz, I want to thank you very much. It was both a very enjoyable conversation. But apart from my own personal enjoyment, I believe there was some tremendous value and actionable items and ideas that were discussed during the conversation. So I appreciate that very much.

Lisa Towles  52:45  
Thank you so much, man, you had a lot of reflections that I will come away with too. So I appreciate the I appreciate the back and forth and the collaboration kind of talking about these concepts. Yeah, it's been lovely being here. And lovely to share with you today.

Agi Keramidas  52:59  
Thank you very much any last parting words?

Lisa Towles  53:03  
Be kind to yourselves, and to be kind to myself too.

Agi Keramidas  53:14  
I hope you enjoyed listening and that you got a huge amount of value from today's episode. If you have, please share this episode with someone who you think will benefit from it. If you want to know more about what I do, visit my website, AGIKERAMIDAS.COM             And until next time, stand out, don't fit in!