Welcome to Episode 11!

In this episode, Julie opens up about how joy and creativity can lift us up, even in tough times.

Rediscovering Joy After Loss

• She shares the bittersweet experience of losing her dad and finding quiet joy in his memory.
• It’s a reminder that joy and grief can exist together, bringing comfort and strength.

A Fresh Take on Creativity

• Julie introduces the idea of a “creative flow”—an energy beyond thought that’s always there to tap into.
• It’s like a universal channel for inspiration, waiting to help us create.

Inviting Inspiration from Others

• Imagine “inviting” someone inspiring—past or present—into your creative space.
• It’s a way to see things in new ways and bring fresh ideas into our work.

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Hello, and welcome to this episode of Creative Fuel for underdogs. This episode is about joy. So, as I mentioned a few episodes back, my father died a year ago. It's just like a few days after a year ago. And

after he passed, he lived in my head for quite some time. And then it just slowly, that voice got quieter and quieter, and then he was not there anymore. But I did, you know, I did use him. So

I have this theory, and again, I will tell you theories, and I will tell you experiences of proved theories, but I'll tell you when I can't completely correlate the two. So I believe that there's this. When we have this idea generator, which is this channel, which you could call the creative flow, but it's this whole channel that is. It's

not in your head. It's the energy, it's the ideas. It's the flow of inspiration that's before it becomes a thought. So

it's this whole, like, flow in that. I believe that we can invite people into that channel so you can, you know, if you're working on something, that there's a famous person like, say, Michelangelo or Einstein or something like that, you can invite them into your channel to feed, and it can be people that are alive, too. It doesn't have to be people that have passed that. You can invite them into your channel to give you a

specific flow of ideas, and. And they can then inspire you. They can, you know, they can be feeding the ideas. Now, again, this is theory. I haven't been able to improve

it, but I have have. I've had experiences that align with it. So, you know, I. I've been developing these programs for eight years, and

just this whole entire last year, I've been putting together what the podcast might look like, how they're gonna be. And then I've started to, you know, record them. But it took me a while to figure out how to record these properly. And my friends here at Pod Popoly

Popoli, I don't know how to pronounce it, Nick's giving me the thumbs up. So they. They helped make this easy. So they made it really easy for

me to just come in and just talk. And, you know, then I'm, you know, going to be bringing in guests. I made that easy for them because they've got different locations here in. Just in

Hudson and then in Cleveland. And I have a lot of guests in Cleveland, so it makes it wonderful for us. So, anyway, so the one thing I did was I was really struggling with an episode like, what should my next episode be? You know, what should it be? So I went

to sleep, and I invited my dad to. I asked my dad to come in and give me some inspiration. What should it be? And he came in and

he said, it's joy. And every day should feel like Christmas. And this is Christmas week, or Christmas. And so

this is the perfect week to talk about that. So. So my inspiration. So. So the idea

is that there is this channel that you can be in. You can get out of your head. You can go into this channel. And I call it the non judgment

zone. And I've actually trademarked the clear thinking channel because it's a place that you can think clearly instead of having all these feelings, all this judgment attached to it. It's just complete non judgment zone. And

it actually makes you feel good when you're there. So when you're doing brainstorming or you're doing your idea list or you're recording ideas of how to solve a problem into, say, your voice recorder or something like that, that when you start in this idea flow and you don't judge, you don't want to get back into judging any ideas. You just want ideas that are. And get crazy, get outrageous,

and we'll do a lot more brainstorming in future episodes, but really just go nuts. Like, and then think of it like, use my alien theory. If I was an alien out there looking at this saying, how would I solve this problem? Or how can I look differently at this problem?

Or if I was the current president, how would I look at this problem? Or are you looking at different people, obscure people? How would Mother Teresa look at this problem? MArtin Luther King, how would he look at this problem? What would come out of

his mouth? And you can even invite them into your channel to give you the ideas and everything, but when you're in this channel, when you're out of your head, the non judgment zone, there's no feelings whatsoever other than this natural, buoyant state that is the true you, the natural you. It feels good, and the. It's just a feel good. And there's this, like, natural joy

there, and it's like Christmas every day. So prior to Christmas, you know, we. Everybody has this, like, this natural joy. They have this abundance. You know, you'll go

through Dunkin donuts drive thru, and the person ahead of you has bought your coffee and. Or your. Whatever your order is, and you're like, oh, I'm gonna pay that forward and buy the next person. And people are doing things, and people are giving.

And people are in this buoyant state. Well, that's what this place feels like every day. And so one of the things that came through from my dad washing can we, through all of this, create this world where everybody lives every day like it's Christmas? Like, what if we had this environment

where it wasn't just this feeling of doing good and helping and kindness and generosity and this flow of well being and good wishes? And what if that was how we operated every day? And how this whole thing of joy, like every day is Christmas? And no matter what your belief

system, there are, like, you know, Hanukkah. There are times where there are celebrations that are. Maybe it's weddings, maybe it's, you know, in your religious system, in your culture, where there are times where this, and could be birthdays. It could be, you know, anything, where there's this feeling of well

being. No matter what things are going, like, going on in the world and what's going on in your life, it's time to put it aside and be present and be, you know, with friends, with family, with all of that. And the whole idea is that the things that are in our head are really what are stopping us from living here every day, and that this actually could be a thing like Christmas every day, this feeling of kindness, there's a feeling of connection, this feeling of, like, the spirit that the spirit of Christmas. Could this be a

real thing, and could it be a world that we could live in and that we're all feeling good? Well, if you get that same feeling from being here in this channel of ideas, of inspiration, of opportunity, and that's the foundation of this program is anything that's bothering you. You know, you're like, hey, that thought triggered this specific feeling. I don't want to feel

bad. I don't want to feel like this anymore. I want to get out of my head. I'm going to problem solve the

fundamental. And you might even problem solve what the problem is, what the fundamental issue is. And so my last episode, I talked about employees. It's because I'm

so connected on an empathetic level that I carry the emotional pain of them and the emotional pain that I'm causing them as a boss, saying, hey, there's not alignment between what we're doing here and that causes emotional pain. And so I. That's what I struggle with. So. And

even though I try to be in a place where I let go, I'm empathetic, I'm supportive. There's this, like, there's discord there. And it's not this place of, hey, we're supporting each other. This is fine. It's

wonderful. There's this. It just isn't working for me. But the whole

goal is to take every problem, everything that's stopping you from living, from this natural, buoyant state of joy and happiness and love, giving and kindness, that whole spirit of Christmas, being in that place all the time. And it's really fascinating when you start to look at what we can do, because the idea, the big vision for everything that I'm trying to do is that we develop groups based on problems we want to solve. I want to solve all of the fundamental problems we're facing. Global warming,

poverty, neglected children, loneliness. So many seniors are isolated. And the pain of loneliness is. It's almost like a torture we're

inflicting on older people. And I remember when I was a kid, you know, that same family, they could only have bread or jam, bread with jam or butter. They couldn't have both butter and jam for dinner. Isn't that

crazy? Anyway, their father was a minister, and he had six kids. And one of the things was they had to do acts of service, which was never required of us. So

for me, it was really foreign. And one of them was that every Saturday, Helen would go and visit this old lady who was a shut in. She was completely isolated from the world. And so other than the meals on wheels guy that came every day or the

postman that came every day, but she would go Saturday and play games with this woman and do puzzles and things like that. So I went with her a couple times, and I could experience the loneliness of the woman and the joy that she had interacting with this child. And because we were kids, we were like twelve, you know, 13, and just brought so much joy. And I could

experience the pain of the isolation, the pain of the loneliness. And I believe, as human beings, we should not be alone. You know, I would love. I would love to see,

you know, really robust senior communities that really everybody's involved. Everybody's included. I would love to see all kinds of different scenarios of how we do things different to, you know, loneliness is the number one problem that we solve. So. So that would be one of the major problems that

I want to solve. Another problem that I want to solve, and we'll talk about some future episodes is ageism. Like. And

we do it ourselves. Like my husband. Like, I love the way I'm aging. I love everything that's happening, even though it's not. I love

embracing my. My new me, every. Every month, there's a new me, there's a new wrinkle. There's something

weird going on. But my husband, he's burdened by it. He's like, oh, this isn't working the same way. Oh, nothing. You know? And he's

really burdened by aging, and how can we completely reverse ageism? And how can we make it a something that we love and we embrace and it's cherished, and older people are cherished instead of, like, youth is cherished. And then how can we solve inequality, like, true inequality that, you know, where people are hungry or without housing and things like that? How can we solve isms like

racism and, you know, all the other isms that, you know, come. How can we? Can we? How? Because this whole program is about the core. Who we really

are is absolutely the same. We have exactly the same fundamental, fun, natural, buoyant, true self foundation. How do we start to see we're all the same no matter where we live, no matter what country that we live in? And then how do you start to solve the issues

that are all coming from, that where people see things differently, they want the wealth that other people have or they want the resources, and, you know, how do we start to solve wars? How do we start to solve all these inequities that end up with the humanness taking advantage of the other humanness? And so how do we get out of that and get to this core state of who we really are and that we're working from this place of who we really are and then solving the problems and seeing our alignment instead of our differences. And so. And then all the problems

that we face, every single problem that we face, that we start to use this and we start to use the brainstorming and we start to. So my idea was that, you know, because I'm in the website world, that we would develop forums for every single interest group, you know, this age to this age that's being bullied, this age to this age that's being bullied, this age to age, and then seniors being bullied, and, you know, and that we would. We would solve the problems. I don't believe humans are meant to be alone. I

don't believe that there's so many things that we can solve. And so we would develop these forums, and that these forums would be where, like, people are brainstorming against each other and they're taking small elements of these problems and everybody's brainstorming, and because it feels so good to shift from living in the problem, and complaining about the problem, having the weight on the problem to solving the problem. Even if you're not solving the problem, you're still, you're shifting the energy to possibly solving the problem. As

long as you're not in your head and you're saying, oh, no, that can never happen. That can, you know, you start getting that whiny voice or whatever, you know, just, that's not about it. It's like, what is tapping into that potential for all the answers, for all the solutions. And then, so

from these forums, we develop these amazing ideas that then somehow, you know, the government says, that makes sense, we can fund this. This makes sense, we can fund this, and we pull together these interest groups of people that are absolutely passionate about solving these problems. And then we can develop businesses around it, and we can develop these just. And we can develop business about

teaching, teaching, advanced problem solving and brainstorming in schools, developing programs that really dial in, identify everybody's unique learning, and then coming up, showing them the systems that, yes, this is unfair, you have to put in more work, but you can still learn. And it's not that, you know, and again, someone proving my past life theory, that you've seen it in the past, you're just remembering. So anyway, so the whole goal is to take this and grow it into this bigger vision. But at the

end of the day, we're operating from this place where we're living in the Christmas spirit. And it is very ideal. It's very idealistic world. But then, you know how you

kind of. You take a breath and you recenter yourself and you get, you know, you calm? Well, my goal is that you go just a little bit deeper and a little bit firmer further. So when something's upsetting you or

agitating you, you're about to fly off the handle or you're about to just go nuclear, or you're. Someone's attacking you, that you. You take that breath, but you go a bit deeper and you channel joy, channel the kindness, you channel the love of this true spirit that you have your natural, natural state, your true self, and you're bringing it into the world. And that we are. We

are using this. We're using the power of this. We're using the power of everything that Einstein could do, everything that these great minds could do. We're channeling

all that into solving the problems of today. And then we're aligning the problems with the groups that are really going to actively solve the problem. And then we're developing the systems to measure the solutions accountability. Is this working? Is

this not working? How are we measuring it? And so all of that, all these systems, everything. So this is going to be the

whole new world we live in, which is we do not accept problems. We are always in the business of making things better. Huge, huge, huge vision for what's going to happen from this program.