The Mindful Coach

00:00:11 So welcome to the The Mindful Coach Association Podcast. I am really psyched to have a special guest today, Jeff Leisawitz. Leisawitz. Yeah, you know, I'll take that too. US.

00:00:29 So welcome to the The Mindful Coach Association Podcast. I'm really excited to have today. I'm going to do this again.

00:00:39 So welcome to the The Mindful Coach Association Podcast. I'm your host Brett Hill, and I have a special guest here today with me, Jeff Leisawitz, who is an amazing guy, I'm here to tell you. This guy is Mr. Creative. He has been working in the field of helping people find their creative expression, their passion, and lighting them up about that for as long as I've known him, which has been about four or five years now.

00:01:06 And I couldn't wait to get him onto the podcast. He's a member of The The Mindful Coach Association Association where you can also find his listing there. So welcome to the show Jeff. It's great to have you here. Well, hello and thanks for having me here.

00:01:22 You bet. I want to read a little bit from your website here, Jefflicowitz.com. That's Jeffleisawitz. Jeffliissowitz.com. And you can find him there to engage on his speaking and his conferences and his workshops and get his book.

00:01:44 You have a book, right? What's your book? I've got two books. One is not effing around the no BS. Guide for getting your creative dreams off the ground.

00:01:55 And the second one, which isn't quite out yet, is called the Magical Impact of Storytelling how to Open Minds and Connect Hearts. Beautiful. I love that. And that's what you say. He says you're on a mission to inspire and teach storytellers and creators of every flavor to open minds and connect hearts with the words and stories, to live their best lives and shine their magic.

00:02:22 So that's really great stuff and so inspiring. How do you do that? How do you get people to connect to how to tell stories, what's alive in them that wants to come out? Like somebody comes to you and says, I feel like there's something here, but I don't know how to move it. What do you tell them?

00:02:41 Sure. Well, the first thing is rather mindful yay, as it turns out. It's to kind of slow it down. Right. Take a couple of breaths and just kind of center yourself.

00:02:57 Because oftentimes, as you know, our brains are spinning around 1000 miles an hour and we're not really tuned to ourselves and to the world. And we don't even really know what we're trying to say, what we're trying to do. We just have this feeling like we better do something. So once we get into a sort of quieter state like that, then we go into the why? Why do you want to tell your story or write your book or any kind of story really.

00:03:30 I mean, I've worked with people with screenplays and abstract painters and dancers and stuff like that. And it's really always about story in. One way or another. So we take a breath and dig into the why.

00:03:49 Why are we doing this? Why do we want to tell the story that we want to tell? And often over time and in that discussion, the reasons and the story gets deeper, more centered in truth, in their truth and in their heart. And once we have the core of where we're going, we can then come up with a plan to expand that, to make an outline, to get a plan to actually do the writing. But you really need to know what you're really trying to do and why you are trying to do that, why this story matters to you.

00:04:37 It doesn't matter to you. It's not going to matter to anybody else, that's for sure. Oh, yeah, right. So you're trying to connect to what's important to you, right? What wants to happen there?

00:04:49 How did you even get involved in the work of trying to help people connect to this kind of expression, this kind of creative work? What was it that moved you to move into helping other people? Well, I think I've always been a helper type service kind of guy and always been a creative, and I've written a million songs and a million stories and a million poems and screenplays and books, and I'm into photography. And great photography is about storytelling too. We all want to understand this world, our own lives, our own selves, and what the hell is going on out there and how we can interact with it in some kind of useful, happy, and fulfilling way.

00:05:41 So I have been teaching songwriting for college students for many years. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And what a great gig that is. Teaching college students to rock.

00:05:55 Yeah.

00:06:00 So a lot of that, besides learning how to actually do the recording and how the chords work and stuff like that, it gets into what are these lyrics about and why are you writing this and who are you writing it for and who are you writing it to?

00:06:20 Right. So depending on what because those can. Be very different, right? Who you're writing it for and who you're writing it to. Right?

00:06:26 Yeah, for sure. So when you look at successful writers, they know their audience, and they also know why they're writing the type of thing that they do. Like, when you think of Stephen King, okay, huge. One of the most successful authors ever. Really?

00:06:49 This guy, if you see interviews and stuff, he talks about, I was always scared as a kid. Oh, interesting. I was always scared. All these stories are really just me trying to overcome these childhood fears. So that's his why he knows that's.

00:07:08 A lot of scary.

00:07:13 And he also knows his audience. His audience is people who want to read this kind of thing. They also share these kinds of fears. So by understanding this and being good at it and doing lots of work, obviously you can create something powerful that connects with your audience.

00:07:37 Right? So teaching teaching or creating from as a manifestation of your own struggles in your life in a way to express something. In this case like trying to reach an audience with Stephen King talking about his fears or writing scary stories to help him feel not so afraid. Exactly. And what's really interesting for me is when we are really vulnerable and really open about our writing, our subconscious melts into our stories and characters.

00:08:24 You don't necessarily even know that you're doing it, but if you start to look, you'll realize, hey, look at this character. What similarities does it have to me?

00:08:37 What am I trying to work out through? Through your character story? Because really, that's all it is. It's an externalization of our inner parts where we can create some kind of drama, some kind of conflict, and have our characters in some interesting way overcome these things to make the change. And that's really what all stories are.

00:09:02 Stories are really just about change, what is changing. And as humans out there on planet Earth, we want to change as well. That's why stories are so powerful. People love them so much. Movies, TV, songs, everything is because we can watch or listen to another person experience a challenge and make a change where sometimes it's more difficult for us to do that in our real life.

00:09:34 In our personal life, since reflecting back on your own story in a way. Right. And so you're resonating with what's really true for you in a way that might not be realized or spoken yet. Exactly. And it's also safe when we're sitting there on the couch or in the movie theater or reading the book or something.

00:09:54 And let's just say it's a romantic comedy. And the young woman, what's a typical romantic comedy? She has to pick between the jerky rich guy and the dork who loves her, right? You don't have to make that choice, but you can watch her do it. And of course she's going to make the wrong choice first and she's going to pay the price.

00:10:19 And then in a typical story, she's going to come around and pick the guy who loves her, who doesn't. We hope so. Yes, we hope so. But we can learn about this without living it first.

00:10:34 And then hopefully we can take that lesson or that wisdom into our own life. That's a very basic example, but I think you get the idea. So what do you say to someone who says, I feel like I'd like to write, but I just don't know. I don't know what is true about my story or why would it be interesting? Who would want to read anything about me?

00:10:55 Well, those are a lot of different questions. Okay, well, pick the most interesting one.

00:11:04 So one of the things we would do is an exercise that I learned in college, which is probably the best thing I ever learned in college. Okay, hold on, I want to break the best thing Jeff's ever learned in college, folks, right here. So save yourself a career in college. Save yourself a lot of money. This is the good stuff right here.

00:11:31 So it's a writing exercise called speed wrap. And what it is, is you write, or it's a practice. You do it every day for ten minutes a day. You write by hand or on the computer. Once you start, you cannot stop.

00:11:48 Grammar doesn't count. Spelling doesn't count. Punctuation doesn't count. You can't go backwards. But here's the real gist of it.

00:11:56 Here's what makes it super cool. You may not finish a thought or a sentence, and this becomes very difficult for people when they first do it. So this might sound something like, I'm here with Brett setting up the scene around the lean stop and go coming back from traffic, right? It can just like, oh, I see. Words just move through rhymes or opposites or just like anything.

00:12:25 Little thoughts, but you can't finish a thought. Just fragments of sentences. Fragments. It's flow, yeah. And when you start to do this, at first, the first thing that's going to happen for most people is that your sort of inner critic, your inner editor, is going to be like, first of all, this is stupid.

00:12:43 This Jeff guy doesn't then this is hard, right, because they haven't done it before. So yeah, it's hard. So the inner critic and the inner editor is sort of rejecting what you're doing, but eventually, if you keep it up, that inner critic, that inner editor won't be able to stop the flow. And when that happens, these words, these images are going to come up through you and start spitting out onto the page. And what you're going to find is there is going to be some juicy subconscious stuff in there.

00:13:25 And that kind of stuff can be very good fodder to continue writing. You write for ten minutes and you find one little phrase, and you're like, oh, I didn't realize that was still a big thing.

00:13:42 And then you can start journaling on that, right? So that's one way to get people going. Another way is to sort of try to understand where your pain is, right? Because that core wound or those core wounds, those things that hurt us, is really where our own drama is. How do we get across that?

00:14:11 So if you can identify that clearly, then you can write about it, and you can write about it again in a safe way. You can write about it through characters that aren't you, who can take chances that you might never take, right? But you can play them out in your imagination, in your mind and your heart. You can experience it, and you can begin to heal through that writing. When you do this with skill and over time and you get this out to a reader, somebody else is experiencing this.

00:14:50 This is a tremendous gift that you give to them, because you're giving yourself your gift of creativity, your expression being seen through that and allowing someone else to see this expression. They will relate to it in the ways that they do, and they will know that they're not alone. And when you think back of your favorite songs and books and movies, I guarantee you, if you think about it long enough, you'll be like, oh, this is why I relate to this, because that character's struggle is just like my struggle. It's not the same. It can't be the same.

00:15:35 Right. But it can be thematically, right? Exactly. That's really beautiful. I love that you're not alone where you're actually not only are you healing yourself, you're healing others and you're healing the world.

00:15:52 Exactly. So one of my little riffs when I do my keynote and whatnot at its best, storytelling is a way for us to be seen, expressed, healed, and connected. When we give our gift of creativity to the world, we become the gift because we show others that they can be seen, expressed, healed, and connected. And when we do this, we change from just a writer putting words down on a paper, the sort of undercover rockstar ninja army that is really here to help connect and heal the world in these kinds of ways. Wow.

00:16:36 I love that so much. It's resonating with me. And I'm connecting because I'm passionate about that same thing. In the coaching world, it's like helping people as coaches be the best coaches they can be, not only heal themselves, but to heal other people. And in the process, we heal ourselves as well.

00:16:59 So much of this just resonates with when you're going to coach people. You often coach people about the very struggles that you've been through. And let's face it, you kind of always go through some version of those struggles. Right. You get better, but you don't ever get in some ways, like, completely healed because when you're damaged, you get a little scar tissue where you're hurt.

00:17:24 And so you remember, oh, yeah, it was like that when I got hurt. This is what I learned. And here's how maybe you can connect with other people who were. Things are a little fresher and a little more alive in terms of the woundedness. Absolutely.

00:17:40 That's beautiful. Yeah. I have this concept that I sometimes mention out there in the world, and that is that coaches are not people who have it all together in whatever they're coaching. Wait, what?

00:18:01 No, really?

00:18:04 Whether it's health or mindfulness or business or whatever these things are. But here's what coaches are. Coaches are people who are committed to walking the path, to get as close as they can, and then to use that information, wisdom, whatever experience to help others. Yeah.

00:18:27 On my mind, it's like, yes. That becomes the mission, in a way, whenever you've done your, quote unquote work and you connect to what's true resourceful and whole and what emerges from that in myself and in many other coaches in general. When I asked you, what is it that you said? Well, I've always been a helpful person, so I kind of would like to know more about that. How did you discover that you were a helpful person?

00:19:00 Wow. Good question. How did I discover it? Well, I don't think I noticed it in myself when I was young at all. However, as I got older, I still didn't discover it in myself.

00:19:21 What I discovered was that so many other people in the world were not particularly helpful.

00:19:31 A little bit of I want to help more than everyone else around me. It seems like I just kind of. Want to, but it isn't even want to. It's like, this is what I do. And then when I look around and I see everybody, let's just say I'm 75% helpful or whatever, I look around and I'm like, well, most of the world is 20% helpful.

00:19:55 I guess I'm helpful in relation to them. There's certainly more helpful people out there than myself. But to answer your question, how did I know that I was this? I think it was by looking at my relationship to others. And at some point, though, you decided to take it a step further, to actually align with, I'm going to help people professionally.

00:20:26 Right. Exactly. None of this was on my radar. When I was younger. I just didn't even think of it or know it.

00:20:36 I was all into pursuing my rock star dreams and writing screenplays and all this kind of stuff, which completely informs what I'm doing now. But it wasn't within the context of coaching. Right. And then at some point, I got into NLP. Oh, yeah.

00:20:55 Neuro linguistic programming. Neurolinguistic programming. And I practiced that for a while. And the reason I got into that was because when I was about 20 and I was in bad shape in a lot of ways, I miraculously found myself to an NLP practitioner and in several sessions literally changed my life. Oh, wow.

00:21:18 Blown away. And then, whatever, 15 years later, I got into the training and started doing that. And from there, it kind of moved into the coaching. From there into coaching. So something happened in MLP that you said saved your life.

00:21:36 Like somehow that connected you up somehow with something deeper. Am I guessing here? Oh, yeah.

00:21:47 It was understanding at the root of it. It was understanding that the subconscious oh, I see. Is driving the whole thing. We love as humans to think our little sort of tiny microscopic awareness at the top of the iceberg driving the show, and it appears to be, but it's not. Right.

00:22:19 So the subconscious pieces of us might be considered either and this is a generalization but either helpful or not. If you believe subconsciously that you're a strong person who's good looking and get stuff done, well, that's a pretty good subconscious belief. You might as well hold on to that one. But if it is something like, when things get hard, I quit, things aren't worth it. Well, then you can look back and see, like, about a thousand times where you've quit in the past 20 years.

00:22:57 That's not a helpful piece to your life. Right. It's not going to get you anywhere. And most people want to get somewhere.

00:23:09 That'S really rich. I totally resonate with that in terms of unless you've done the work of doing your inner work and really seriously looking at how do I do? This is going to sound a little strange. How do I do I, how do I do myself in the world? How do I actually work?

00:23:36 I guess I sometimes have these conversations with myself when I'm imagining explain something to other people, like people who might not really have that much going on. And I guess the thing about me is I've always been very intellectually curious about how things work. And that includes at some point, I kind of look in the mirror and go, how does this work?

00:24:01 How do these brains work? It's kind of like this is a very complicated system. And you know what? I don't know anything really about it. I imagine these things, but is it so?

00:24:14 And that inquiry led me to come to many of these same conclusions about our neurology, really structures a great deal of how we of our of the quality of our experience, which leads, of course, into mindfulness so that we can have some authority, if you will, around the quality of experience that's a little bit separated from the circumstances of your life. Well put. Well put.

00:24:43 If you allow the circumstances of your life to control the quality of your life, you are then at the whim of the chaos of the world. Yeah, that was a pretty good quote. I might want to quote myself.

00:25:01 Here we are, folk memes memes a minute here on the The Mindful Coach Association. So yeah, exactly. So and it's in the in the work that I do, it's very important to help people kind of breathe a little moment of mindfulness into the traditional sort of automatic mode behavior so that there's a choice there. And you begin to then be able to study the dynamics of, oh, I want to be reactive because this guy said my work wasn't good enough. And I can just hear my brothers and my mother saying I'll never amount to anything.

00:25:42 And it triggers all of that. And so you have this outsized reaction, and you really don't want to have an outsized reaction. Instead of being reactive and saying, well, you don't know how hard I worked and who are you? You go, tell me more. What's really true.

00:26:01 That's a conscious choice. That's a big decision right there. Absolutely. The more conscious we can be, the more we can guide our lives and create our own destinies rather than being driven by the subconscious. Well, and the thing is, I think I'm not trying to take over the guest slot here, but I know we're aligned on this.

00:26:24 It doesn't come naturally. You have to create that capability. And so the exercises you're talking about, which I really appreciate, are like what you call the writing speed rap. GM. The writing speed, yeah.

00:26:41 Writing. That really opens the door to that unfiltered process. So you disrupt the normal neurological processing and let something new happen. I think that's really key, I think, is engaging new stuff so that you can find out who you are in new ways. Yes, absolutely.

00:27:10 So what are you doing these days that's inspiring to you? Are you engaging in any kind of newness or you've got your new book that's coming out. What was it that got you connected to your new topic, your new book? Well, the new book is based on my keynote speech, the Magical Impact of Storytelling how to Connect Minds and Open Hearts. I wrote and rocked the speech.

00:27:40 I figured I might as well just make a book out of it. That's that. And you can reach people in different ways because they can always hear you speak at an organization or company or some marketing conference or something like that. So that's part of what's going on. There other things that are interesting to me right now.

00:28:07 I am a sort of part time filmmaker. I am currently making a music video vampire short film. A vampire short film? Well, that's something you don't hear every day. Yeah.

00:28:22 Well, the funny thing is I am sort of into vampires, I guess, but I'm not really into horror at all. So it's really not that scary. But there is a vampire in it. The unscary vampire. Cool.

00:28:36 So that sounds like a fun part. So filmmaking, let's run through the things. So there's keynote speaking, there's being an author, there's movie making. And I remember we've talked before. You play instruments?

00:28:52 Yes, I play guitar and bass and program beats and bass lines. I do all kinds of that music stuff. And you were teaching songwriting? Yeah. I'm into photography.

00:29:07 I'm really into a whole lot of different creative forms. And I have been since I've been young. I just love all this stuff. And I love that technology can allow us to do some of these things at very high qualities for very low cost.

00:29:28 That's just cool. That is cool. So I'm wondering if in all of this exploration and all these talents and all, it's like the thing that's moving you is like we talked about before in the work I've seen you do really actively trying to inspire people. It feels to me. And your first book not effing around it's kind of like, let's get serious about this, folks.

00:30:05 And I have a copy of it. And I went to your workshop, too, which was really good on writing. And so it's like this wanting to help people.

00:30:18 Can you talk a bit about what it is that really helps people kind of connect to what it is that wants to happen? And then we talked a little bit about this before, but I guess what I'm looking for is, like, a story. Like, do you have a situation where you found that this was really helpful or specific? That one technique was great. Is there anything else in the wheelhouse that you would say?

00:30:46 I found that this was really useful with writers or artists. Well, let me give you a scenario. People who are blocked, you hear about writer block all the time, right? Somebody comes to you, I just am completely blocked. What might you suggest to them?

00:31:04 Well, I'd probably start with that exercise. But besides that, one of the reasons why people get blocked, whether it's in writing or anything else, is because they get too serious about it. It matters too much to them. It has to be perfect. Oh, I see.

00:31:23 So I've done workshops, and I work with clients like this sometimes, where we consider the art of the ephemeral. So if you think back of the Buddhists with the sand paintings, the sand mandalas, you know what I'm talking about. Go out there. They put the colored sand in this big, beautiful mandala on the concrete of the temple, and then they say a prayer, and they sweep it away. They work on this thing, three or four guys, for two weeks.

00:31:54 They sweep it away, and they're magnificent creations. They're incredible, beautiful. And the concept is non attachment to the outcome. So what I like to do with clients is exercises like that. We don't use sand and mandalas generally, although that would be fun.

00:32:15 I'm like, write something and rip it up, literally destroy it, rip the paper. And people get very freed freeing feeling by literally destroying the thing that they just created. Right. Because it shows you that it is not that important. It is both sacred, what we create, and it is nothing.

00:32:48 Right. So in college, I had this pottery class. I thought this was amazing. So the teacher teaches us how to make the bowl on the wheel and all this and that. We come back the next week, and she's like, okay, come with me down the hall.

00:33:02 And we all go down the hall into this little, like, cinder block bunker. It's like little tiny room. Okay, put on these. Goggles. Okay.

00:33:13 She's like, Jeff, smash your pot against the wall. Oh, my God. What?

00:33:22 We smash it against the wall. We smashed all these pots. Let me go back into the classroom. And what was that about? Well, it's this concept that if you're going to be a potter yes.

00:33:37 Everything you create is valuable and there's always something more to create, right? So that it's valuable, but it's not. And when you come to your writing with that kind of attitude, you realize that it's true and the writer's block disappears. I get the college students who are so worked up that the very first song that they have written is not sounding like it's going to get on the radio. And I'm like, do you know how many songs Taylor Swift wrote before she got a record deal?

00:34:19 Or the Beatles? And even just a band now you put out an album with ten songs you probably write. If you're a decent band, you're writing 40 or 50. Right. So the concept is don't get too attached to what you're doing, especially if it is stopping you from doing it.

00:34:45 Right? Yeah. So just put something down and don't worry about it. Just get the flow going and see what happens. Exactly.

00:34:54 And from there. Nice. This podcast is really about coaching and then helping people who wish to be and are coaches or helping professionals that use mindfulness in their work. And so it's like if you were talking to an audience here of people who were their creative work was coaching. And this might be a little bit of a sideway question for you.

00:35:22 I don't know, but I don't think it is. What might you say? How could you apply some of this insight into people whose primary mechanism, or the thing is they do is they're helping other people? Because I'm imagining if let's just say that that's my music. That was, you know, maybe we can riff riff on that a little bit.

00:35:47 Like, what would be the way you could help people kind of organize around finding my creativity and inspiration around that? Yeah, absolutely. Great question. So there's a lot of different kinds of coaches out there and different approaches to coaching. But I have found personally that the best coaching, my best results come from what I learned in a band in college.

00:36:20 It's called the structured jam. It's basically like the Grateful Dead fan. So for people who are not into the Grateful Dead, what the Dead used to do is they'd have a song which was structured, chorus, verse, all that. However, they would also go way into the jams. These guys would go way into outer space to just explore and be curious about what the music could do.

00:36:49 And sometimes it was a sonic disaster and other times it was more heavenly and beautiful than what any human could write. Okay, so that's what the Grateful Dead do. I bring that. And I suggest you coaches out there bring this to their coaching. If you're too structured in what you're doing, you ask a specific set of questions exactly like this, or do these exercises all in a row that is actually limiting if you go totally the other way and it's like, hey, what's up?

00:37:25 Man and try to coach it like that. That's too much of the jam. Right. But if you can find that balance between what is your system, where are you trying to take this thing? Where is this going?

00:37:40 Right? That's the structure. And then really be curious without the agenda of the answer or where this thing is going, that's where you're going to find the real juicy stuff. And by the way, that will keep you on your toes as a coach, because since you don't know what's coming, you have to marshal your own resources and be mindful yourself so that you can react in a way that's helpful for your client. Beautiful.

00:38:15 I love that. It's like a coaching jam. It's a coaching jam, yeah. Wow. I think we invented something here.

00:38:23 Coachingjam.com coming to you. Courtesy The Mindful Coach Association association. Wow, this has been so fun. So how can people connect with all this goodness that you're doing? Well, best bet is just hop on my website, Jefflizowitz.com, if you can spell that properly.

00:38:43 Or Brett, if you put that on. The I'll put it in the show notes. Yeah. You can also get the book or books on Amazon. If you come to my site, there's tons of blog posts and stuff like that with all kinds of things on there.

00:38:56 And then I'm very happy to do complimentary coaching sessions with people. Nice. And you can also find his listing at the The The Mindful Coach Association Association as well, so you can find him there and find links to his resources and his social media, which I would recommend because he puts out some awesome notes via email periodically. It's really always great to touch that fire. We're coming out of your social media thread.

00:39:25 I really like that a lot. So thank you so much for joining us on The The Mindful Coach Association. I really appreciate it. And any parting for phrases, any parting. Words, just thank you for being here.

00:39:38 Always great talking to you. Great. Thank you so much, Jeff. It's great to have you on the show. Take care.