Elizabeth Blake Thomas, Medicine with Words

  Well,

welcome back friends to our podcast, unlocking your world of creativity. And we love traveling around the globe, talking to creative practitioners about inspiration, organization, and confidence to get our work out into the world. I'm so glad to have as my guest today a very wide ranging published and produced creative Elizabeth Blake Thomas.

Elizabeth, welcome to the show.

Hi, thank you. I love hearing how people introduce me. It's so

awesome. Yeah with all the slashes and hyphens and different projects you have going on, it's like, where do we start? The published books, the professorship, the podcasting, the nonprofits, but certainly producing and directing wow, more than two dozen films and you've got lots of projects in the works now.

So your creativity

abounds. That's true. But you know what? There is an underlying theme and the underlying theme for all of these things is that I try to transform one person's life each day. That's my mission. That's my goal. So I either do that because I have someone may have watched one of my movies, or maybe they're working for me, or maybe I give them a piece of pocket art, or maybe they've watched one of my videos.

It doesn't matter. It's about transforming one person's life for the better each day.

And you really also in coaching and like you said, encouraging and teaching other creative people, you've developed a practice and a set of tools called medicine with words, which I love the connotation and the visualization of using words in a medicinal fashion.

Tell us about that a little bit. Because

they are, and that's the thing that I think I recognized so crucially as a mother, actually. Everything I said to my child was going to affect her, was going to bring back a memory in the future, or whatever it was. And I realized that the power of our words. Is beyond anything we could imagine.

I was very severely bullied at school and at college. And I remember sentences that were said to me. I remember exactly where and when those things were said to me. And they have impacted me. And we're talking 35 years ago now, so those words have huge power, and if we start to think about those as a medicine, and not look at them as a negative, but look at them as a positive, it's amazing how quickly we can start to heal others and heal ourselves.

Yes, and many times we think of creative organization is just clearing our desk and getting our ideas in place. But you also focus on the clutter in the brain. I think about the clutter and sometimes we've got some and you mentioned some of our past traumas and some of our sort of defeatist attitudes.

And certainly with we creatives, our egos are very sensitive to outside. Judgment and outside pressures. How do you help focus and help us live more intentionally with decluttering all this stuff in our brains? Yeah. You're

absolutely right. It's, we are just basically that onion that has grown with layers and layers, and it's about peeling that back.

One of the exercises I have is called cabinet cleanse. So if you imagine in your brain, you've got these filing cabinets and you decide what they are to you. So for example, I know mine are, I'm a dog mummy, which by the way, it's always funny that I put that first. First, Isabella, my daughter, does have a comment on that.

Dog mummy, mother director, let's go butterfly view, let's think about all of the cabinets that I have, and then within them, I think about what's structured within them. Because also, when you think about what you've got on. We can feel totally overwhelmed. So as a creative, I know when I'm literally going to that cabinet that is to write my book.

That's what I focus on. Because we're also taught to multitask a lot. And actually, I don't believe in that. I believe in monotasking. I believe in finding that one thing and not saying, Oh, I'm so successful because I've done so much today and I'm exhausted. Actually, I think of it as the opposite. And so there are a mixture of ways of getting clarity on what we're doing.

So good. I wanted to go rewind the tape here for a moment. You went by a title of a cabinet called butterfly doula. Now I have two friends. One's a birth doula and one is a death doula. So I have to stop and pause and say butterfly doula. Tell me about that file drawer.

It's the most wonderful cabinet because actually, I didn't know I was going to become one.

And I needed a modality, or I wanted a modality, with which to teach my medicine with words. And butterflies kept appearing in my world. And I was given this opportunity to become a butterfly doula, which means that you are literally there from the beginning, the eggs on the milkweed, the whole process.

all the way to releasing them. And they live in this spa and it's the monarch butterflies because they are unfortunately deteriorating with their numbers. And so I felt a huge privilege that I got to have this process, but connecting it to us as creatives, as humans, a metamorphosis, every stage, how does that connect to us?

What does that look like? Was life changing for me.

And not only as individuals, perhaps, but I see now projects as butterflies, they, we incubate on these ideas for a while. And then finally, this burst, this transformation, we have to bust out of the chrysalis and perform the work.

And also, it's not just that, there is a stage, unfortunately, where sometimes in the chrysalis, a tachinid fly will attack.

And so that process that egg went through and the five transformations to get to that stage can't actually happen. And that's an acknowledgement for us as well, to say, when is something not going to happen? When have I got to restart, reset? So the, every process is very interesting when you connect it to us as humans.

And Elizabeth, how do you apply these? You're still very active in directing and filmmaking. In fact, perhaps you can share with us your latest project. But you're putting all of this in a book. How do you apply some of these principles in your own creative work?

Yes I call it holistic filmmaking just because then people understand, ah, there's a different way of doing it.

But I, from every single element, from the projects I now choose, the story subjects, the subject matter, the the way I work, who I bring onto my set, how I structure my set, how I want to feel on and offset at the end of a project. All of this encompasses that feeling of self care and self nourishment for me and for everybody I'm with.

And the film that's coming out 21st of November, Caroleek, was very much shot in that way. I tried to create a family environment. It's a lovely family film, but there's nothing that is inappropriate for anybody. It's a very simple story, but it's about achieving your goals. And I think that I can bring every practice into every element of my work.

And it's literally a family project. You're working with your daughter on the film. How is that dynamic?

My daughter is my best friend. Obviously my dog is as well, but don't tell my daughter that. And she and I work incredibly well together. So she now runs Mother Daughter Entertainment, which was the production company I set up for her.

And we worked together when I was CEO. Now I've passed that over to her. And then Medicine with Words is what I run full time. But there's a constant collaboration where she'll come over to my side and I'll go to her side. And it's a constant communication. And I, what I love from her is that I get the insight from a 20 year old, 21 year old, I get that information.

And that's just as important. It makes me continually relevant, I think.

Yes. We like to stay relevant and up to date. And in that regard, you also have a new book coming out, Living With Intention. arE these sort of pearls of wisdom, stories? How is the book set up?

Actually, all of the above that, because that's how my brain works.

So it starts with the concept of. What is living intentionally? I discussed some things that we all know, but maybe I tell them in a different way, like vision boards and my nutshell cards. And then there's a story from me connected to each of my tools. And there are 10 of them so that they can, the reader can understand why I created those tools.

And then there are the exercises. for those tools and their practical exercises, pen to paper style, thinking about the brain breathing, cabinet cleansing, all of those. And so it takes people on this wonderful, mindful journey. And it's something that can be repeated as well because I know I needed something and wanted something in life that wasn't just, okay, I've done it now.

What this is a book that you could repeat, you could do every year, you could do every six months and it just gets you thinking in a different way, which I think is what's important at the moment.

And I think with a lot of these tools, I'd be curious as your particular approach or fingerprint on something like vision boards or nutshell cards that really try to access both sides of the creative brain.

Definitely. So for me a purpose of a vision board isn't what I was taught as a young person, which was cut out some things from magazines and stick them because I want to go to Egypt and visit the pyramids. To me, it's a total creative process from choosing the medium I'm using. And a lot of times I love painting and then I got my pens and I write on it.

Also, what I do is I don't wait for January 1st, I put something on my Instagram the other day. I think I did my last vision board in September and someone said, you've literally blown my mind. I can make a vision board in September. I can restart in September. You don't have to wait till January.

And so living with that intention means that you're doing that every day and it can be at any time. So my book is out 19th of December because I did feel like for most people maybe it's a Christmas purchase or maybe they're ready in January. But you can do it anytime and be part of a reset anytime.

Yes, but in keeping with this word intention, you've really I guess ring true with this idea that it's not just put some gold plated Rolls Royces and some mansions, these dream things that we used to think of his vision boards, but really align them intentionally, with your goals, with your objectives, with your projects and how you see them ultimately finishing.

It's

very important because that is again where I feel people almost, I've created one and now that's my life, actually it's a constant process and it's a constant journey and a constant change. But the emotions are just as important as those tangible items, actually more important. The tangible items to me don't really exist in the sense of I don't think I've put on my board any form of item.

Maybe there are places, definitely places, but for me it's how I want to feel, how that process takes place. That is what we are almost not taught in school and as young people. Now it is improving, I will say mindfulness is appearing, family mindfulness is starting to appear. But recognizing how do I want to feel at the end of my day?

How do I want to feel at the beginning of the day to get those intentional choices to lead me to that emotional feeling at the end? All of this is crucial to how we live with intention.

Yes, I have picked up on some of this over the past few years in my own vision boards where, you think about goals being anything you can have be or do, but most people do focus on the acquisition part of the vision board.

But I think these emotions you know how do you want to feel how do you want to show up for people. I loved at the outset you talked about impacting somebody, positively every day. So I think these things should be part of our creative vision, shouldn't they?

And I think they help you with your creativity.

I know that once I open myself up to thinking outside of the box, to thinking about other people and not just myself as well, then I wouldn't have written all these things. I wouldn't be working in the same way, aligned in the same way. And creativity comes in all these different forms. And that's the other thing.

It's not about saying I'm just a writer. Again, we're taught that. I remember when I was at school, it's like you had to pick a lane and you stay in it. By changing my life in the last five months, I sold everything. I sold the boat I lived on. I sold my VW bus. And you know where it caused panic?

Not with me, with everybody else because they suddenly didn't understand, but you're the boat lady. This is who you are. And I said no, the boat doesn't define me. It's just helped me get to where I am for my next

stage. Literally the vehicle. At that moment. Yes, exactly. The stage of the trip in life. So you're also touching on something that, we created people.

We, we need to put ourselves out there, and yes, our work, whether it be our songs, our book, our artwork, yes, will impact people, but just the interpersonal game we still need to get out there. Don't we?

Yeah, it's very much about putting it out there because one of the things people say to me and they, their faces are often filled with fear is, how did you do it?

How do you know it was good enough? What made you suddenly realize that was okay? I'm very fortunate and I teach this. I'm not a perfectionist in the slightest, and I know that everything I create is leading me to the next thing. So my Living With Intention book, I could have spent another year, two years building on it, but that's not what it is.

I've done it. That's that process. And now I'm on to my next book. And now I know what that's going to look like in the next film. And I feel like it's about constantly growing through that, putting it out in the world and helping others grow. And that's really important.

I think about even the venue you and I met at.

An empowerment conference, a room full of creative individuals. We could have just sat at the tables and talked all day. But this idea of showing up, we would have never met her. We, I would have never crossed paths with your work.

Absolutely, and that's where people, I think, do have a fear as well, a fear of the unknown.

But the expectations in that can sometimes stop us and prevent us from taking that next step. So if my expectations was on my book that I'm going to get on the New York Times Best Seller list, maybe I wouldn't be putting it out there yet. If my expectation on that event that we met at was, Oh my God, I need to make sure I get 50 business cards and and I, my business is going to explode from it.

I have no expectations. Everything that happens is a bonus. The fact that my book is out is a bonus. The fact that I went to that event and within the first minute I'd shared a piece of my pocket art with somebody, I was like, okay I've done it. Everything else is a bonus. So I think if we remove the expectations on ourselves, we can enjoy and embrace life in a much healthier way.

So good.

Speaking of events, you have your own event coming up that you've been putting together. Tell us about that.

That's right. I'm very fortunate. I put out into the world under a year ago, nine months that I wanted to run retreats. And what I mean by that. is in my head, I thought I put it all together and I'm part of it.

And sometimes you have to do have an attempt at something and try it to realize what you don't want to do. So actually I realized I don't want to run the retreat. It's a bit like being a producer. I actually just like being the director and I like just running my workshops and being featured at these retreats.

And I was approached by this wonderful lady in England. Who's a nutritionist. She has a beautiful venue in Lincolnshire. And she said, would you be featured as medicine with words for the three days and help us reset? And I was just blown away by the offer. So yes, that's happening in January. So again, when you start really working out what you exactly want, it's amazing the clarity that you get.

Yes. Help paint the picture of the setting of these workshops in Lincolnshire.

Okay first of all, it's a beautiful venue, actually. So everybody that will be coming, there's a variety of ages will, in their head, because it's called Reset, understand that they are coming there to reset themselves from a physical aspect, emotional aspect.

But what's really important for me is I give people practical tools to take back into their everyday life. Because it's all well and good coming to this beautiful venue, being fed well, having that time out, nobody bothering you, but actually you need to be able to take that back into your everyday life.

So that's my plan for those three days, is to help them absorb these tools and exercises and utilize them when I'm not there.

Yes, and I think a lot of people have the same idea you do, and that is, boy, putting on workshops, putting on retreats. It's a lot of work. How did you come to team up and collaborate?

Yeah, it's

really interesting. I've done a lot of work now, but also because I have. Had that self belief in knowing that what I do is needed. So I do a lot of research. I find other people that have got a similar mentality going to those events people that I already know work in that space and it really is naturally progressing and building again.

No expectations. I'm not in a rush I believe that this is the right thing. Even this morning i've been approached by someone who said I've, I think there's something else. There's another angle of something that people would like from you. And I'm like, I like it. I'm going to work on that too. So I'm very organic with my growth.

Again, just like a butterfly, I don't, you don't suddenly go, I want to shed this layer now. It happens when it's time. Yes.

Much is being written and talked about these days about boundaries, when to say no, who not to work with, limit yourself. But you're also encouraging us to.

Show up, look out there, connect with people, say yes, and see what happens.

But both of those are just as important as long as you're doing it intentionally. So I created something called a pyramid of purpose. So I have a very clear structure of my choices. And I have one question that I ask myself all the time.

Does, whatever that is, lead me closer to My end goal, which is on the bottom of my pyramid. So my bottom of my pyramid at the moment is traveling with my dog next year doing my book tour. So let's say the empower event that we went to. Does going to the empower event lead me closer to that? I knew it did.

So I could intentionally choose that. Now, there are also things called cloud words that you have around your pyramid. And my cloud words may be off. Fun or time out or connections. So maybe, let's say going to a music event doesn't necessarily directly lead me closer to going on my book tour, but maybe it picks some of my cloud words and that's necessary.

But I can also make those choices of If something doesn't do any of the above, then no, I don't do it or I don't go to it. So no's and yes's are the same as long as you are living with the intention of what you have chosen at that moment.

And one of the biggest obstacles for creatives is often fear of something.

And even your first book, filmmaking without fear, you address this. very much elephant in the room of fear. What insights now, especially as you have moved forward with living with intention what about fear? How do we address it?

So again, I don't think it's an unhealthy thing to experience. I think it's good to acknowledge it, just like with my, it's good to have a to do list as much as a not to do list.

Fear is part of who we are. It was there with cavemen. They were fearful of the dinosaurs coming to get them. But the for me, it's about saying What is the worst that can happen? And I process that and go to it and understand that. And once you understand your why and why you might be feeling that fear, you can turn it into a positive, or you can even have a clear decision on whether that's something that you want to do.

I also believe a little bit of fear is Good. It gives me the boost of trying something new and trying something different. But again, is that because I feel unsafe because that's my why if I feel unsafe, then I need to acknowledge that and work out what that means for me. But I think. Once we break it down, if we understand we have a support system there, if we know what's the worst that can happen then we can rationalize it and say, oh, so actually I'm just scared because I'm going to be a failure.

What does being a failure mean? That means this to me. Oh, therefore that isn't going to mean I lose my friends or I have, I've, or I lose something maybe that's important materialistically. And it's this whole web that needs to unravel to understand. Why? But if I had acknowledged certain things, let's use giving birth as an example, if someone had told me how painful it was, I wouldn't have done it.

So sometimes it's good to not understand what the outcome is as well because you learn along the way. But it's a support network, a community discussing it with people. But I don't think fear is a bad thing if it is a healthy fear.

Yes, very good. Elizabeth, can't thank you enough for joining our show before we close.

I'm going to have a another question for you, but I want to be sure people know how to find you how to connect with you and learn more about your work.

Okay, so let's think so we've got my Instagram handles are at medicine with words and at Elizabeth underscore be underscore T. My website's a medicine with words.com, then my mother and daughter entertainment.com.

I think it's mother and daughter ent.com. I have a TikTok. I'm not very good at it, but that's medicine with words as well. What else? Literally you Google my name and everything appears, and I love that. I feel very honored that's how people can find me.

Yes, I can definitely espouse to that and listeners.

I'm going to put all those links and all those handles in the show notes. So you'll be able to find them and click through to them. So Elizabeth, I was thinking about medicine with words and I wondered if you could leave us with an exercise or a practice as a prescription. that we can take our medicine with these words.

Is there some action or activity or exercise you could share with us that would really unstick us today if we were stuck in our creative heads?

So I'm going to do two actually, if I may, but they're both quick. The first one is I call it a cup of tea because as a Brit, a cup of tea is very important to me.

And what I try to get people to do is to understand, as I said, about monotasking. For me, the process of choosing my tea Watching the kettle boil, watching the tea seep, and sitting there and drinking it can be a five minute, ten minute process. And that's a form of meditation. It's a form of stopping, not doing something else, not answering the phone or the emails.

And it's amazing what happens when we just stop. So that would be my first thing. And it can happen anytime. I like to do it in the morning, but I regularly fit it in throughout the day. And my second thing is called a patting yourself on the back exercise. So if you draw around your hand on a piece of paper, and I think it's really important to acknowledge what we have achieved, and this could be as simple as I got up today, or I made someone smile, or it could be, I completed a page in my book.

But you fill out in the hand all of those things you can draw, you can write, and you'll stick it up. And you could have this where it's maybe once a week. I tend to do it actually once a day where I remember, what have I achieved today? And it's just lovely, and I've ended up with a whole wall filled with my hand and covered.

And pat yourself on the back, that recognition and say, flipping well done,

Very good. Listeners, let's get those hands drawn on the paper and cut them out and wallpaper our wall with. I also think of that maybe as applause. Let's put our hands together for what we've accomplished. Elizabeth, thank you so much.

It's been a pleasure talking with you.

Thanks

for having me, Mark. You take care.

Yes. My guest has been Elizabeth Blake Thomas, a multidisciplinary creative and filmmaking author. And we've talked about live events, all those things that she's doing and practicing and coaching under this company named Medicine with Words.

So listeners, come back again next time. We're going to continue our Around the World journeys, talking with creative practitioners. We'll learn how they get inspired, how they organize ideas, and most of all, how they gain the confidence and sometimes the connections to launch their work out into the world.

Until next time, I'm Mark Stenson, and we'll be unlocking your world of creativity.