Sarah Werner:

This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner.

Sarah Werner:

Hey, friends. Welcome back this week. I am so happy to be here. I am even more happy to introduce to you today’s guest, Rebecca Wiener McGregor, who is one of my very good friends, but who is also just this amazing professional who has taught me and mentored me so much throughout my life. So I know I say throughout my life like we’ve been friends forever, I think we’ve only known each other a couple of years, but it feels like forever, in the best way. So just real quick, Rebecca is an amplifier of love, and a catalyst for breakthroughs. She shares her gifts as a transformational hypnotist and money mindset coach, committed to helping overworking and overgiving visionaries release old blocks, traumas, and hidden fears to find a deeper sense of self-worth and determination to live life on their own terms, while being fulfilled, well-paid, and having loads of fun. Rebecca, welcome to the show.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Hi, Sarah. Thank you so much. So happy to be here with you.

Sarah Werner:

Oh gosh. Well, I’m happy to be here with you always. We’ve had so many great conversations, and we’ve been talking about getting you on the show for a long time, especially because during so many of our conversations, we’ve talked about creativity, and you’ve actually coached me through some issues that I had with fear and creativity. And I’m going to ramble on for just one more second, because I want to say I did an episode on fear a long time ago, so you guys can go back through the archives and find this episode on fear. The advice I give in that episode was advice that I originally received from Rebecca, and I do credit her in that episode as well, because that’s important. But Rebecca was really the person who introduced me to the fact that we don’t really ever get rid of fear, we just need to thank it and sort of dismiss it to the backseat, and not let it really drive our bus. And so, I would love to start there with our conversation today. Rebecca, can you talk to us about creativity and fear?

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

I’d love to. And we do have to co-exist with fear. It’s kind of a beast at times. It can get really, really loud, especially when we ignore it, but like you said, it’s always going to be on the bus. It just doesn’t have to be driving the bus, going the wrong way down a one-way street at 80 miles an hour. It can be there as a compass, guiding us to places where we need to grow, boundaries or limitations that we’ve created, that we can actually move past. But instead of fighting it, we can learn from it, be, I don’t know, be friendly with it. Maybe that’s too cheerful a word, but friendly with it. And when we know how to handle our fear, we can really open up our creativity, because the only thing that stands in the way of creativity, which is a very loving actually, it comes from love, it comes from the imagination, is to not handle our fear. So the only thing that will really interrupt that creativity is letting our fear get out of control.

Sarah Werner:

So for somebody who just does not even know where to start with that, what is a first step? So if I’m a creator and I am just paralyzed with fear, I can’t sit down to write, or draw, or paint, or whatever it is that I feel like I’m called to do, how do we even just begin to move past that barrier that we’ve put up for ourselves?

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Acknowledge the fear. This is the beginning of building a really deep relationship with yourself, acknowledging that fear, acknowledging, “Hey, my body is telling me that I’m feeling fear right now. That knot in my stomach, that pressure in my head, that tension on my shoulders, that elephant on my chest or that can’t catch my breath feeling, those are big strong indicators of fear,” especially when we know there’s no physical reason for them, right? And our emotions come from one of two places. They come from fear, or they come from love, and when we’re in that fear place, we have these physical responses. We start often to judge ourselves about it like, “Well, I’m a grown up. I have a good life. Why do I feel this way?”

Sarah Werner:

Yeah.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

“I am an aware person. I’m intelligent. I’m creative. Why do I feel like this?” Those are judgements, and attaching a judgment to an emotion will actually make it a horrible situation, where we’ve compounded and made that emotion stronger because I’m adding the judgment.

Sarah Werner:

Oh my gosh. It’s so interesting, as you’re saying these things, I’m like, “Yep. Checking off boxes. Yup, I say that to myself, I say that to myself, I say that to myself”

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Right.

Sarah Werner:

Wow. So if we find ourself in a place of fear, and then if we find ourself in a place where we are judging ourselves because of the fear, gosh, you talk about acknowledging the fear. So we acknowledge the fear, we maybe start judging it. Then what can we do to kind of get out of that downward spiral?

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Well, our usual thing is to go for the judgment, right?

Sarah Werner:

Yeah.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

To go for the judgment is the first thing. That’s the natural thing to do, because we judge things we don’t like, and fear doesn’t really feel good, so we’re like, “What the heck? What’s going on? What’s wrong with me? Why am I doing this?” So of course, as an amplifier of love, I’m going to ask you to infuse love into the situation, and that means talking to your body, talking to your mind, “Hey, you’re feeling some fear right now. I’m feeling fear right now. I’m not fear, but I am feeling fear,” separating it from who you are as a person. You are not fear, but the body is feeling fear, and this is why: the brain does not give a flying fig about your happiness. It only cares about your safety.

Sarah Werner:

Oh my gosh, wait. Wow. That’s one of those quotes that I’m going to highlight.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Okay. So this is the thing. It’s your spirit that wants happiness, that wants joy, that wants fulfillment. Your brain doesn’t care about any of that, it only cares about keeping you safe, and what is the safest thing for the brain is the familiar, the same. The doing the same thing every single day, not expanding, not growing, not pushing past your limits, not getting famous for writing, not being visible. All those things, your brain doesn’t care about any of that. It doesn’t want any of that for you, because that’s the unknown, right? Especially if you’re growing into your career or you’re expanding your visibility. So sometimes we’ll feel fear, because the brain is really trying to stop us from growth, because the unknown is scary for the brain. The unknown isn’t necessarily even scary for your spirit, but it’s scary for the brain.

Sarah Werner:

Right. Oh my gosh. I’ve never thought about that.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Right. For the spirit, the unknown is a field of all potential. That’s what Deepak Chopra says, right? The field of all potentials, that darkness that we see as the unknown is also the potential. So we get in this place of fear of, “If I can stay in this fear,” and this is the brain talking, “If we can stay in this fear, then we won’t grow and we won’t be unsafe. No one will reject us, no one will abandon us, and we won’t die alone.” Pretty basic. All of our fears come back to dying alone. That’s just the way it is, root of all the fears. Right?

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

So when we can talk to ourselves and say, “Okay, in this awareness, I’m feeling this fear,” instead of you getting mad at yourself, ask yourself, what do you need right now? “What do I need right now? What can make me feel safe right now?” And especially for creative people, because I work with a lot of very creative people, routine is actually really powerful, because routine is the same, right? The same thing over and over, but sometimes people can feel like routine is really mundane and boring, and not great and yucky, but routine makes your brain feel safe. So if you can get into that place of routine, you’re actually serving the fear part, and you’re also serving the creativity part, because the creativity gets to be set free because the fear is calmed.

Sarah Werner:

This is so good.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Good.

Sarah Werner:

I don’t even have words right now. This is just so mind-blowing.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

It’s really powerful when we pay attention to what we need, and how the brain works, and how our emotions work, and acknowledging that we have options. We don’t have to be stuck in the fear. We don’t have to freeze, we don’t have to avoid, we don’t have to crawl in bed, we don’t have to lose ourselves in something else when we’re feeling fear, we can actually talk ourselves through it and be loving. And I’m going to add a little asterisk here.

Sarah Werner:

Okay.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Okay? Because we don’t get extra points for suffering.

Sarah Werner:

You know me.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

There’s no bonus round that says, “Okay, Sarah, you suffered for 18 hours last week, so now you get 18 extra points.” That’s not the way it works. So you can even ask yourself, “What am I attached to around suffering right now?”

Sarah Werner:

Ooh. In a way like, how do I believe the suffering is serving me, almost?

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Exactly. Yes.

Sarah Werner:

Yeah, it’s getting me extra credit, right?

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Right.

Sarah Werner:

Like if I suffer, therefore, I’m doing good. There’s just so much gross mindset stuff wrapped up in that, especially for people like me. And if you’re listening, this may sound really familiar to you too, if you feel like you get extra credit for martyring yourself or for pushing yourself to a point of pain or discomfort, please heed Rebecca’s words. They are so good and so loving, and so life-giving.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Yeah, and you said it’s gross, it’s kind of ugly, but acknowledging it and releasing judgment around it, that this has been the state where you’ve been living, if that’s the case, that you really like the attention that you get when you tell someone, “Oh, I’ve been working on my project and it’s just taking everything out of me,” just know that you can receive love from your other people and from yourself, without having to be around suffering. And that’s not a judgment, it’s an acknowledgement, okay? I’m a very frank person, but it’s delivered with love, because why the heck would I do anything else?

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

It doesn’t make sense for me to judge you. It doesn’t make sense for you to judge yourself, because then you’re just creating more of the same feelings, a horrible, painful cycle where your creativity is not set free, because you know when your creativity is set free, you get to share your story, your truth, your mission, your purpose, your vision for your life. You get to share your stories, you get to share your heart, you get to brighten someone’s day, you get to terrify them, if that’s your genre. You get to have fun doing that, but if you wrap yourself in judgment, it’s really hard to move forward. It’s really hard to let that flow of the 36 books in your series come out when you’re stuck in judgment, right? So be loving with yourself. How can you set yourself free? “How am I attached to suffering right now that I don’t need to be?”

Sarah Werner:

Oh my gosh.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

“How have I given my happiness away?” And we do that by blaming other people.

Sarah Werner:

Oh, tell me more about this. Is this like a victim mindset kind of thing?

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Yes, and I call it giving away your happiness cards every morning, like waking up with the expectation that everyone else needs to handle your happiness. “If my husband does this, if my kids do this, if my partner does this, if my company does this, my agent does this, if they do this, if the person shows up to fix the water heater at this precise time,” right? “If they do all the things, then I’ll be happy.”

Sarah Werner:

Oh.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

“When they arrive at the precise time and do everything perfectly, they can give me my happiness card back, and I’ll be happy.” That is very disempowering, because we’re handing out or happiness all across the land to everybody else, when we can choose the emotion that we want to feel right here, right now in the present. We can give them their responsibilities, but their responsibility is not our happiness, that is ours. And on the other side of that too, is other people’s happiness is not your responsibility.

Sarah Werner:

Those are two huge thoughts, and two just hugely mind-changing thoughts, because I do set up conditional happiness for myself, and I think a lot of other people do too like, “Oh, if I get this job, then I can be happy,” or, “If I land the right agent, then I can be happy.” Oh my gosh. What is the secrets to separating yourself from that? What is the key to keeping your happiness cards for yourself and not giving them all away?

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Knowing, and remembering, and practicing, because it is a practice. You don’t wake up on Monday morning being perfect about this, okay? You practice keeping yourself in a good place. You practice responsibility, personal responsibility for your happiness. That doesn’t mean you’re happy 24/7, right?

Sarah Werner:

Right.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Let’s just acknowledge that a normal human being with a human being brain is not happy 24/7. There’s a lightness, there’s an ease, there’s a flow that can happen, and it doesn’t have to be fake happy, cheerful, Polly positivity, Pollyanna syndrome, that kind of thing. It can be, “I’m living my best life right now because in this moment, I can choose to feel any way that I want.” And remember, this takes practice, so if you’re like, “Screw you, Rebecca. I’ve tried getting to happiness, I’ve tried choosing my emotions,” there are people who can help you work on that, if you need help getting out of that muddy field that you’re trying to get yourself out of. I’m acknowledging that there is a muddy field sometimes, that we have to get some help and support to get out of.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

But as we practice infusing more love, “What about this moment can I be happy with? What’s good in this moment?” Feeling the air in my lungs? Looking outside and seeing the flowers have bloomed or whatever? It could be something big like, “I just landed this agent.” It could be something small like, “Ah, my creative brain is limitless. I don’t have to be stuck in this pain right now. I don’t have to be stuck in this disgust or judgment of myself right now, because I have a brain and creativity that can also create exponential stories from me right now.” So why not use that to create joy, to create happiness, to create ease for yourself? Even if it’s not your genre, right? You can use that to create really beautiful, powerful things for yourself.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

And like I said, it does take practice, and I think gratitude is talked about so much, and it’s so simple that people don’t give it credit. We really like complicated things, especially smart people, right? We love, “Oh, if it’s not complicated, I’m not even going to try it, because it’s not worth my time.”

Sarah Werner:

Oh yeah, “And is there a way I can, overcomplicate it?”

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Oh, exactly, exactly. “Can I make it so complex that we’d have to call in some neuroscientists to help us sort all this out?” Yes. At such a basic level, what can you be appreciating in this moment, and then where can you allow yourself to be open to receiving joy, happiness, abundance in all forms? If you detach from suffering, where can you open yourself to receive?

Sarah Werner:

It’s so funny, because it sounds so simple, and it is so simple, and there’s this part of me that wants to reject that it can’t be this easy, right?

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Sarah Werner:

But again, it’s not necessarily… It’s simple, but it’s maybe not easy or immediate, or there’s work involved, there’s practice involved, there’s repetition and gratitude involved. And yeah, it’s just so easy to think like, “Oh, there’s got to be more to this,” or maybe even, “I don’t deserve this.”

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Absolutely, and “I don’t deserve this,” is rooted in the fear that you’re not enough. So if you acknowledge to yourself, “Hey, I’m having a fear that I’m not enough right now, who do I have to be enough for? How can I be enough for myself?”

Sarah Werner:

Oof. Oof.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

If you want to play the “what if” game, “What if I am enough right now, just sitting here, not doing a single thing but listen? What if I’m enough not producing? What if I’m enough not creating?” So that my baseline is enough, so when I do those things, I really feel like I am sharing myself with the world in a positive way.

Sarah Werner:

Yeah. Oh. Every time I speak with you, I just get this beautiful feeling of clarity and just understanding, and I almost want to fast forward to the end of the podcast and be like, “How can we get in touch with you? How can we work with you?” But I want to save that for the end, because I want to continue our discussion. Oh, this is so incredibly good, and starting out talking about fear and judgment, and why we hold onto those, and why we see value in those, or why we think we see value in those, we just really need to start tearing down some of these concepts that we’ve picked up. Gosh, I just, I have every question for you, and no questions for you simultaneously, and I’m trying to think of what listeners would be curious about or want to ask you about.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Can I acknowledge something about what you just said about judgment?

Sarah Werner:

Yes, please.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

In the same way that we have fear and judgment at the root of our feelings, we have fear and love at the root of our emotions. We have acceptance and judgment at the root of our awareness. So we’re either in an acceptance place of, “This is as it is. What can I do with it as it is? How can I appreciate it as it is? What am I learning? How can I move through this moment? How is this helping me? How is this serving me?” Or how if we’re in judgment, “Why is this destroying my life?”

Sarah Werner:

Ooh.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

It’s really what’s happening when we’re in judgment, is we’re in that place of, “This situation’s hurting me, and it’s destroying my life.”

Sarah Werner:

Oh my gosh.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

When we’re in acceptance, it can be, “This is causing me pain, and what can I learn from this? How can I move forward from this? How can I shine the light on ‘this is hurting me,’ because I have learned to love so deeply?” And that’s not a bad thing, right? Just looking at things in different ways. One of my favorite, favorite quotes of all time is, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” It’s Dr. Wayne Dyer, and I built my entire career on that statement, because everything has a different angle. Everything can be accepted or judged. Every moment can be infused with fear, or it can be infused with love. We can have just quiet around that, because we don’t have to fill every space with a judgment or an expectation.

Sarah Werner:

How do we begin to move from judgment to acceptance?

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Awareness. Awareness is the key to notice when we’re judging. Usually, when we’re in judgment, because judgment is rooted in fear, fear that someone doesn’t respect us, that we’re not respectable, that we aren’t good enough or worthy enough, or enough of whatever fill in the blank, there’s a feeling that comes into the body with fear, just the same way that there’s lightness in the body when there’s happiness, and love, and all that stuff, right? So noticing when your body feels a feeling of tension, something is being judged, something’s being held on onto. I’m not talking about after you’ve worked out, and you had leg day and you can barely walk. That’s a little different, right? But when you’re sitting in your space, or you’re taking a walk and you notice that your thoughts are racing and there’s a feeling in your body, just taking a breath, a long exhale is really key here.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

That’s a reset button by the way, taking a really long exhale. And “What am I judging right now? How am I feeling about this moment right now? What are my thoughts?” Because as soon as we start to pay attention to them, we can change that, we can shift them, and we can infuse more love, and we can see where we’re attached to suffering in the moment and say, “I choose not to be attached to that suffering anymore. I choose to love myself just a little bit more today.” And we can do this in tiny, tiny increments, right? It doesn’t have to be a 180 degree shift overnight, and it doesn’t even probably ever need to be a full 180 degree shift anyway, but a couple degrees shifts every once in a while has you going in a completely different direction where there’s more ease, more peace, more clarity, more certainty, more self-trust, more self-worth, more fun, more fun, and more fun.

Sarah Werner:

I do love fun.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Yes. It’s vital. It’s vital, and often, we’ve taken that out of the equation altogether, because we’ve filled everything else with so much judgment.

Sarah Werner:

Right. Wow.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

So be in the moment with yourself. I always think of creativity as a channel, and so, in my mind’s eye, there’s this picture of this [inaudible 00:24:21] tunnel, and this is the channel, right? And the only things that cloud that channel are judgment and fears. They clog things up, they cause drag, so the creativity can’t move as quickly, and swiftly, and easily as we want it to. But when we remove that drag, then we get to come back to living in our imagination and having fun, and creating our life by our imagination.

Sarah Werner:

I’m just sitting here smiling, because you read my mind. My next question was going to be, what does creativity even mean? And I love talking with you about creativity, because you are such a deeply creative person and you’re always making things, and you’re always in an act of creating, but in addition to that, you also have this intensely creative mindset. Can you tell us a little bit about, or a little bit more, I guess, since you already started talking about it, about how you see creativity at work?

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Creativity at work is, it’s an opportunity, really. I think of creativity as an opportunity. It’s an opportunity for fun, it’s an opportunity for designing your life and manifesting your desires, it’s an opportunity to entertain, and all of those things create such joy in me, that that’s where I want to spend my time. I want to create things for my clients that help them shift into new places. I want to create my life in such a way that when I look around, I’m in my dreams awake, and I want to create solutions. II love to find solutions for things. And so, when I’m in that creative place, that is my fun. It’s like my lab, and creativity at work, it can be a really loving act. It’s a really giving actually, it’s generous to the self and everyone who gets to participate in it, and it can be so easy and fun, and it does not require suffering. There are a lot of limiting beliefs about starving artists and that the only good art comes from suffering.

Sarah Werner:

Ugh. I used to believe that.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Right. Those are really dangerous, dangerous beliefs, and you can be thriving and well-paid, and well-read, and well-fed, and well-traveled, and be a wonderful artist. It does not require suffering, and I feel like just acknowledging that and deepening that understanding of that statement can set you free, because there are many people listening, I know that you have many listeners who have attached to suffering. Why do I know that? Because I used to live in that zip code myself. So, 17, 18 years ago, that was my place, right? And I’ve grown into someone who knows that I can have pain, and I can have struggle, and I can have difficulty, and things can really turn to crap very quickly, but I don’t have to live and dwell in suffering. I don’t have to be stuck in suffering.

Sarah Werner:

That’s such an important distinction. That’s such an important distinction, because it just feels unrealistic to think, “Oh, I’m going to be happy all the time, and I’m going to skip through fields of daisies,” and it’s like, “No, you might stub your toe when you’re skipping through the field of daisies, but you’re still in a field of daisies.” I feel like that was a horrible watering down of everything you just said, but.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

But also very simple in its display in your mind, right? That that is the truth, that fields have rocks in them, and sometimes you trip on them. And I just moved onto some dream land, dream property, lakeside, this has been a fulfillment of a dream that we’ve had for a long time, and the first day, there was some water in the basement, and then one of the days, the water heater broke, and we need new windows and stuff like that. Doesn’t mean that the dream isn’t happening, doesn’t mean that the beauty isn’t there, it’s just there’s stuff that needs to be handled. The lake stays there, it’s beautiful. The sunrise comes every day, the sun sets every day, and I find extreme beauty ain all of that. You can see that by my social media feeds because I’m always posting.

Sarah Werner:

I was about to say, I love the sunsets. You know me. I’m like…

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Yeah, I love seeing that certainty in that, even though there are uncertain things that are happening with the house, and the property, and things like that, there’s a sense of joy anyway, that we made it this far, and the best is yet to come.

Sarah Werner:

I love this so much. I love you so much. I love-

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

I love you.

Sarah Werner:

Oh my gosh. So if people are interested in chatting with you, or if people are interested in connecting with you or working with you, where do they go, how do they find you? How do they connect with you?

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

They can find me through my website, rebeccawiener.com. You can find me on most social media @iamrebeccasue, and I would love to talk to anybody who’s ready to shift out of suffering, shift out of anxiety, shift out of rage, and really dive into their creativity and have some serious fun. They can reach out to me for a conversation or consultation, and we can start on a fresh path, a fresh path of ease and flow, and joy.

Sarah Werner:

It’s so wonderful and so tasty. I’ve worked with Rebecca who has, oh my gosh, done so much for me and my mindset and continues to do so. And I will make sure to have links to rebeccawiener.com, as well as your social media in the show notes for today’s episode, so please go ahead and click over there.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Thank you.

Sarah Werner:

We’ll just make it really easy for you.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Very nice.

Sarah Werner:

Rebecca, thank you. Thank you, thank you times a million, billion, trillion, for being on the show today. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time, and everything about your message is so loving and empowering, and it’s just more of what I want to see out in the world, so thank you.

Rebecca Wiener McGregor:

Thank you so much, Sarah. I love our conversations where we get to stretch our minds together.

Sarah Werner:

Me too.