Summer Fridays: The art of paying attention (w/ Wendy MacNaughton and Laurel Braitman)

If you found yourself doodling or writing a lot as a child but then lost the hobby as you grew up, Wendy MacNaughton and Laurel Braitman want to help you recapture your spark. Wendy MacNaughton is an illustrator, the author of “How to Say Goodbye”, and the creator of Draw Together, an art and learning community. Laurel Braitman is a TED Fellow, the author of the memoir “What Looks Like Bravery”, and the founder of Writing Medicine, a community of writing healthcare professionals. Together, Wendy and Laurel created Attention Club, a group of people pursuing creativity by practicing focus with one another. In this episode, Wendy and Laurel join Chris for an in-person chat at the 2024 TED Conference where they discuss the feelings that arise when sharing art with an audience and why embracing mistakes can lead to more meaningful work. Vote for our show in the Signal Awards for Best Advice & How To https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2026/shows/genre/advice-how-to podcast! For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts https://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Fill out our survey at bit.ly/BHSurvey6 https://bit.ly/BHSurvey6 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  makes this show. Thanks for listening and thanks for taking a few seconds to do the listener survey. Now, onto the episode.

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• 2:11Speaker 00

  Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening to How to Be a Better Human. This summer, we're doing something special. We're calling it Better Human Summer Fridays. And every Friday this summer, we are going to be dropping a special episode on the feed, pulled straight from the How to Be a Better Human archive. These are conversations that I loved and that our team loved, and we think a lot of you may have never heard, and we think they deserve another moment in the sun. So we're giving them that literal moment in the sun here in the summertime. This show has grown a lot over the years. So this is our way of making sure that if you found us recently, you're not missing out on one of the conversations that I am still thinking about, sometimes years later. And if you are a day one Better Human listener, well, first of all, thank you. Thanks for listening for all these years. And I hope that you will enjoy this trip back into our archive, back into

• 2:54Speaker 00

  some of the best conversations that we've had in the past. So let's get into it. Here's Better Human Summer Fridays.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. What you're about to hear is an episode that we recorded in person at the TED 2024 conference in Vancouver. Over the entire history of this podcast, we've only ever recorded a very small handful of episodes in person. Most episodes of this show, we record remotely with me, the guest, and the production team, all in separate, quiet little places spread across the globe. The great part of that is that we get to feature guests from all over the world. But I have to say, there is also something really special about being in the same room for a conversation. And I think there's probably no episode that could have been more perfect to do in person than this one. Because our guests, Laurel Braitman and Wendy MacNaughton, are artists and

• 3:50Speaker 00

  writers and people who take presence very seriously. They make noticing and really being in a place and in a moment with other people into the heart of their individual creative practices. And together, they've started a very fun little society of people who want to do the same to unlock their creativity. It's called Attention Club. We're going to talk about Attention Club and about their individual work and about their work together in just a moment. But first, let's start with Wendy and Laurel talking about their friendship and their love for each other. This first voice that you're about to hear is Laurel.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  My favorite people, the people I am closest to in this life, are the people that I feel like I laugh the hardest with. And also, I can talk about tragedy and disappointment and shame and the days when I have fallen very short of the person I want to be, and my biggest, deepest fears, often around loss and disappointment and heartbreak. And Wendy has been one of those people from the jump, the very first minutes we met.

• 4:51Speaker 03

  Right back at you, Laurel. My gosh. Yeah, I feel like Laurel, you are somebody who I can call when I have something hilarious to share and I know you will get it. And you are somebody who I can call when I can't get up off the floor and I know you will get it. Yeah, and I feel like everything all at once.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Best compliment ever.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  As I think you can probably already tell, these two are hilarious and wonderful and heartfelt, and they're just so much fun to spend time with. And you're going to get to spend even more time with them right after this quick break. Don't go anywhere.

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• 8:40Speaker 00

  Today, we're talking with Wendy McNaughton and Laurel Bratman about art, writing, the creative process, and how to be present and notice what's happening around you.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Wendy McNaughton. I'm an artist. I have a book called How to Say Goodbye, and I'm the creator of Draw Together.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm Laurel Bratman, and I am an author, most recently of the memoir What Looks Like Bravery. I am also a rancher and a professor and the founder of the Global Community of Writing Healthcare Professionals Writing Medicine.

• 9:10Speaker 00

  So, I want to talk to you both about so many things, but let's start with how you two became friends.

• 9:17Speaker 03

  Oh, that's such a good question. Pop-Up Magazine, right?

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, there was this incredible multimedia, nonfiction storytelling extravaganza called Pop-Up Magazine, and it was based in San Francisco. And it was a live storytelling onstage, and it brought together an incredible community of writers and artists and photographers and filmmakers and such, traveled all around the country. Laurel, you were a, what was it, contributing?

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Contributing writer.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  Contributing writer.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  I was really scared of you. I met you at a party at your house, and I hadn't performed for the magazine yet.

• 9:58Speaker 03

  Oh, that's amazing.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  And, oh my god, you were so cool, and I could barely talk. I was so intimidated, and I so desperately wanted to be your friend.

• 10:06Speaker 03

  Oh, my god.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  I was just trying to not look too thirsty.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  And, yeah, so we hosted a party there, and it gathered this community together. I mean, this is the best thing about Pop-Up, is it introduced so many of us. And then, we went on to become friends and collaborators. And, yeah, it was just a really great creativity.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Changed my life, that party.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  It was a good party, yeah.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  It sounds like an amazing party, yeah.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  I wish you'd been there, Chris.

• 10:27Speaker 00

  I wish I'd been there, too. So, now, you two have collaborated in all sorts of different ways, but one of the ways is starting this Attention Club. So, can you give me the brief synopsis of what Attention Club is?

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Sure. Well, Wendy and I have wanted to work together forever. And Wendy, in teaching drawing to so many kids and adults all over the world now for years, offers people drawing prompts. And I teach writing to not kids, but lots of adults and young people. And we talked for a while about how might the ways we ask people to pay attention to things and find meaning in hard things that happen to them, or notice things that they might otherwise miss. How do our different styles of teaching, how could they overlap and complement each other?

• 11:12Speaker 03

  So, when Ted offered the opportunity to do a workshop, we decided that would be a really great chance to create the Attention Club. Both of us, yeah, use our respective writing and drawing as a way to focus and pay attention and connect with people and each other and the world around us. And so, we developed a workshop, and we presented it. We asked people to use the tools of drawing and writing to look closely. Usually, when we might be like going out into the world and exploring the world, or, you know, going deep inside, having conversations, we were just in a conference room, right? But it's pretty cool, even in a conference room, when you use simple tools to really focus your attention, you can find bits of magic and then really explore that and create

• 11:56Speaker 03

  something beautiful out of it. So...

• 11:58Speaker 00

  You know, you've both worked on really big projects. You've also worked on smaller projects and stuff that is iterative and happens, you know, you send out newsletters or you send out prompts. When you work with people, what do you tell them about attention? Like, to make it part of their creative practice?

• 12:11Speaker 02

  I don't know that I actually tell a student that I'm working with to pay attention. I think the very act of having someone sit still to engage with creative practice for a few minutes forces them to pay attention to something. And my job as a facilitator, whether it's in a workshop we're teaching, or even in my own work, is to swing the spotlight onto something that we might otherwise not pay attention to. And that's really done, I think, by asking someone a thoughtful question, and then giving them some protected time to either write their answer, or speak their answer, or draw their answer. And so,

• 12:51Speaker 02

  to me, it's really about finding a kind of question that unlocks what someone is ready to ponder, whether that's, you know, a boring chair in a conference room that reminds them of a chair they sat in as a child, or a shoelace, or, we use a bunch of different examples in Attention Club, to show people that there's really complicated, interesting stories behind stuff that they normally would just rush past. But to me, it's the question that you ask somebody that kind of forces them to pause and be like, oh, yeah, because so rarely do we have time to pay attention to a tiny detail.

• 13:23Speaker 00

  I've heard you, Wendy, write about the idea that, like, everything that is happening is right for the material, that like you deliberately work with a medium watercolor, where things can't be completely perfectly controlled. And that, I think, a lot of people, especially when they're like paying attention or trying to access creativity, they get stuck, and they're like, am I looking at the right thing, or am I doing it in the right way? So, I'm curious to just hear you talk a little bit more about like imperfection and mistakes.

• 13:50Speaker 03

  Like, to what Laurel's saying, my interest with drawing is that it forces us to put a spotlight on something and then hold it there. Because through the process of drawing, we are paying close attention to it. We have to slow down, if we're drawing from observation. Like, you have to look really closely at things that if you just give it a glance, you'd never notice. And the more you draw, the more you notice, the more time you're gonna take. And I would say that if, most of us usually sit down when we think we're gonna draw something, and we leap to the end result, where I'm going to draw this thing, right? And we might have an idea of what that's gonna look like. But when we can really slow down and start to draw it and pay close attention to it, we let go

• 14:34Speaker 03

  of the expectation, and we are completely immersed in the process of drawing. In that moment, you have no idea where that drawing is going. You'd have no idea what is gonna happen. So, there isn't any such thing as a mistake. Whatever happens is like the inevitability of the experience, and it's so much more magical than anything you could ever imagine. So, like, the mistakes are where the art is. The mistakes are where, like, the humanity is. The mistakes are where, like, the opportunities for falling in love with the thing is, right? And like, that is what happens when we can really pay attention. Like, that's what they call the flow state. Yeah, again, like, it's like love, like, when you're really in that

• 15:15Speaker 03

  moment, you know? And you're fully immersed in the experience. I think that, like Laurel was saying, like, when we really look at that shoelace, when we frame the question correctly, and we can slow down and look closely at that shoelace, an entire world reveals itself.

• 15:31Speaker 00

  For me, this line was important in my head of like, having a day job or not having a day job. And now that I don't, now that I don't have a quote-unquote "day job," I realized that like, that was a totally artificial line, and like, you can make great art. In fact, in some ways, I think maybe I made better, more interesting comedy before I worried about whether it would make money or not. But, in my head, there's this line where, before I'd made that jump, I thought so like, oh, my gosh, like, there's a, these are professional comedians. And then there's me, and I'm so different. And something that I think is really amazing about both of you is you have these incredible professional accomplishments. You are very, extremely talented, and that's come over years. But

• 16:13Speaker 00

  you're also really dedicated to breaking down that wall of like, I'm not capital A artist and you're lowercase a amateur. Like, I'm not professional writer and you're amateur writer. But instead, having people see that they have the ability and the talent and unique voice that they can express. So, how do you get people to believe that? Because you both do a lot of work with people who probably don't initially believe that.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Well, one of our rules was absolutely, you know, mistakes are encouraged, and also no apologizing allowed, you know, before you share your creative work. And I think those rules aren't accidental. We need to set people free from also a binary of like, I am a creative versus I am not a creative. Like, creative becoming a noun of something you can be, right? So offensive and terrible. As if, like, people who are not quote-unquote "creatives" then don't have license to do this kind of work? That's crazy. And so limiting. And so, I do think a lot of our work is about showing people the great capacity that they have, that very often, a lot of the adults that I work with have told themselves

• 17:21Speaker 02

  such entrenched stories about how, you know, they have chosen to say, be doctors, or nurses, or what have you, and the creative work is what somebody else does. And it's just reminding them that, listen, like, this is our birthright. We are born knowing how to tell stories, knowing how to be curious, knowing how to ask good questions, and to come up oftentimes with fantastical answers. And, you know, feeling bad about that is the feeling of doing it. You know, not being sure if you're good at it is the feeling of being creative. So, I think it's also just normalizing that and inviting people in to be like, okay, we're all gonna feel bad together. And in feeling bad together, like, it's gonna be okay.

• 18:01Speaker 03

  I love that. Yeah. Like, I don't know anybody who is a quote-unquote, like, "professional writer" or "artist," and doesn't feel like they don't know what the hell they're doing, like, almost all the time.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Constantly.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  That is what it is, right? Also, so many people say to me, like, I can't draw. Okay, so what age level do you think you draw at? And I say, oh, I draw like a six-year-old. I'm like, so when did you stop drawing? They say, oh, when I was six years old. You know? And I was like, yes, exactly. And what happened when you were six? What made you stop drawing when you were six? Probably, you know, you were drawing a picture, and some grown-up, like, looked over your shoulder and said something like, oh, that doesn't look like our house, or something like that, and made some kind of judgmental, critical comment that planted a seed in that kid's head, that there was an expectation of the way a drawing should look, and that they had to achieve that in order to get approval from that person

• 18:54Speaker 03

  who was probably somebody that they care about, right? And that ends up growing and like contaminating our whole system, and ends up in a perfectionist kind of self that so many of us, and ironically, so many of us who are very creative, carry with us. And so, I believe that drawing is this, and especially when coupled with writing, it is this like silver bullet that can go back to that place. And if we can like start to use those very tools again, to let go of that, like, pressure, you know, and that there's a right way to do something, oh, my gosh, like, it's a whole new freedom of creativity can unlock for us.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  I know you could give many different exercises, but maybe something from the world of drawing and something from the world of writing, if someone is listening, wants to try something, just something small that they can put into place. What would, what would be a little exercise that you think? Might be interesting for them to experiment with.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  I think a fun assignment would be the assignment that we open Attention Club with, the blind contour drawing, and then asking someone a question. The prompt, what was the last time you were wildly happy?

• 20:06Speaker 02

  If you turn to someone in your life and you ask them to describe the last time they were wildly happy, they have to use all of their senses to answer the question.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  I love how specific you are when you give these prompts about using your senses. I think that takes people into their bodies and it takes people into the present moment. And it gets them to write from a place that is not cerebral. It's writing from a place of experience.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's also helpful to do it in the first person, even if it's a memory. So I open the door. If anyone is ever stuck, you know, writing, I tell people to switch to the present tense.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  Oh, to the present tense? Oh, that's cool.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:48Speaker 03

  This is something that I actually don't speak without doing this because I can talk for an hour about drawing, but I can actually offer people the experience to see how it impacts, how they see, what they see, and how they connect with people in 60 seconds. I ask people to turn to each other, ideally a stranger, or it can be something they know, but ideally a stranger, and then draw each other for 60 seconds with two rules. The first rule is you're never allowed to pick your pen up off the paper. And the second rule is you're never allowed to look down at the paper upon which you're drawing. Okay, it sounds totally disorienting. It is, but the actual point of that is that you are looking at somebody closely for 60

• 21:32Speaker 03

  seconds without looking away. And moreover, you are allowing yourself to be looked at for 60 seconds. So it creates this immediate vulnerability and openness and exchange between two people that, I mean, has led to people becoming friends, you know, or like exchanging, you know, their social media information from different countries and they're staying in touch. But more so, it just takes off this little bit of the armor that we all have. So as we go forward, we're open to that exchange. And then, when you follow that up with a prompt like Laurel gave.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Describe the last time you were wildly happy. And you told the person who drew you that story and they told you yours. And we had each person take a few notes down on the drawing they did. And, you know, there's nothing like being in a room of strangers while they recount the last time they were wildly happy to each other, using all sensory detail. It's so much fun. There is just such an incredible energy and you could do it with someone you know well, you could do it with someone you don't know well. I do think it's fun with strangers, but it's something easy to do even around the dinner table. And part of the reason I think it's so effective is like, the drawing is quote unquote, bad, right? Like, you don't look down at the paper, like you draw someone, it looks like a Picasso, you know, but like, not a good Picasso.

• 22:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:56Speaker 02

  There's like a floating eyeball.

• 22:58Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, they're so silly.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  It's a very weird thing and it forces you into, oh my God, this was enjoyable. This is actually a quote unquote, good drawing, even though this looks nothing like the person. And I think that from the, from that place, then you're like, okay, we've reframed, like, who is bad and good at this? And the point isn't to make it look like the actual thing or the person. And I think that's huge. Goes back to, you know, what we were saying around how to help people, you know, feel more creative, I think, and how they lose it. I think part of it is not just being shamed perhaps by someone in your life saying like, oh, well, that doesn't look like our house. But it's also because you start to have tastes that you can't possibly meet.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  And so I think that's a part of like, particularly if you're someone who loves the creative arts, like you may love great music, you have your favorite artists, you have your favorite comics, you have, and you realize you're not that good. And so instead of pushing through to get to the place where you find your own unique way of doing it, you're so intimidated because it doesn't look like your heroes that you also shut down. And so I think all of this work is really about showing people like, you know, we're bad forever, all the time, you know, even though those of us who do it as a job. And so any of these kinds of ways where you can make yourself kind of productively uncomfortable or bad in practice is just so much fun.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  It makes me think that one of the like, single best pieces of advice I've ever gotten, and I think about all the time in all sorts of creative work that I do is, for, I had a friend who for a time was like, in charge of buying movies at a company. Like, she was the person who like, read the script and then decided, do we buy the script? And interestingly, she left and now is a kindergarten teacher, which is great. I love that. Great choice for her. But at the time, I was like, okay, I, my dream is to write a script and to sell it. And this is the, I know a person who does it. And so I asked her one day, can I tell you a movie idea? And she was like, because we're friends, she was like, of course you can tell me an idea, but I will just tell you that a perfect idea is worth much less than a bad script. Because you can fix a bad script and I can't do anything with a great idea.

• 25:05Speaker 03

  I love that.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  And that blew my mind.

• 25:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 25:09Speaker 00

  And I think about that all the time because it's so easy to get stuck in the like, what I need to do is have something perfect. And instead, it's like, the only way you get to perfect is by making it bad. And then it gets better.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  So I have this little tattoo on my wrist. I have to tell you this tattoo story. It's a little arrow, right? And it points at my hand. And it's from a letter that the artist Sol LeWitt wrote to the artist Eva Hess in response to her letter to him saying, I have all of these huge ideas. I want to do all this great work and I just can't achieve, like you were saying, Laurel, I can't achieve this magnitude of brilliance that I have in my head. And he wrote to her and he said, stop your whining, your thinking, your sniveling, your big ideas, your big ambitions, and just do. And it's this giant word do at the bottom with all these arrows around it. And I find myself getting so stuck, again, back to that perfectionism again, or back to like, these high aspirations and stuck in the idea place of it, when if I think

• 26:04Speaker 03

  about anything that I ever feel really good in my gut about doing, it was figured out in the process of doing it, in the making of it, you know? And so I tattooed this darn arrow pointing towards my hand to remind myself, nothing good comes out of my head and definitely nothing good comes out of scrolling on my phone, okay? Like coming up with an idea, come on. It's actually through getting a pencil, sitting down, and just starting to make something.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  We're going to be right back in just a moment. In the meantime, do not go scrolling. I know as soon as you said that, you felt the temptation. Resist that temptation. Stay present.

• 26:49Speaker 00

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• 29:15Speaker 00

  It's all about elevating those ordinary daily rituals into something extraordinary through thoughtful design. Kohler has been pushing these boundaries for over 150 years, mastering that balance of stunning form and high performance function. That's a long time to get it right and it shows in every detail. Experience the difference of Kohler Smart Toilets. Find out more at Kohler.com.

• 29:46Speaker 00

  And we're back. Laura, like, one, one thing that I know you really push people to do in their writing and that you care about a lot is to be specific and to think about objects and imagery. And in your book, you talk about a lot of loss. You talk about really missing your dad. And one of the things that I, I will think about for the rest of my life is when I see honey, I will think about this story that you have with your dad packing honey, basically, for knowing that he wouldn't be there and making sure that you would have this for years and years to come. So in the vast experience of your own life and your relationship with your, your father and dealing with grief, how do you find the thing that is resonant like that? And how do you make it so that other people can feel the resonance too? I know it's a huge question.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Huge question. You know, we all have our, we all have our equivalent, though. I am someone who, I am just like a magpie of meaningful objects, you know? I love stuff. I, it's very like non Buddhist or whatever. Like, I just, I love stuff because they are receptacles for memory, they're receptacles for love, for longing. I love history as told by objects in my own life and that of others. And so often when I am working with other people or teaching, I have them bring a meaningful object into the space. And that's often a great prompt, you know? Tell me why this object is meaningful to you. And it works with pretty much any age and any circumstance. My life has been one in which I have lost a lot of things I have cared about.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  People, animals, and when it came to a wildfire, like, most of the things I owned and loved. And you would think that would teach me that those things don't matter in some way, right? The opposite is true. I am still very acquisitive. And also, I think it's important to realize that treasures are treasures because they are memory prompts, because they contain the stories that have made us who we are. And I find peace, particularly when I've lost something meaningful, to write about it. It's, it's a way of making it real. I feel that way about people, too. You know, I've written about some of the people closest to me that have died because it's a way of making them immortal, at least for myself, and to make sure that other people can meet them, too.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  And that's been a, a really fun, weird process, you know? You get to, as writing, you, you get to go back and if you are using all of your senses, you kind of have to relive all of these things, you know? Painful, less painful, funny, and inhabit them again. And I think it's the closest we get to having a kind of parallel universe in which we get to experience moments of our life again. And that's been really healing for me. It's also hard sometimes. And I just, I want to help other people do that, too.

• 32:28Speaker 00

  You know, sharing these people and these really intimate and sometimes really hard moments of your life, sharing that publicly with strangers who can't know, who you can't know all of the time. I wonder, now that the book is out in the world, and a lot of your work before that was more journalistic, was more about other people, how does that feel? Like, how does it feel when someone comes up and knows some of these really intimate details of your life?

• 32:52Speaker 02

  Well, two things. On the one hand, I mean, this is why we write memoir, I think, or make comedy or draw about our lives, is like, I want to not be alone in there, right? There's some piece of me that wants other people to know about the hard stuff and then be like, oh, my God, me too, but mine was a little bit different in this way. I'm going to come stand over here with you because I am on this team also. And before, this would have been, this tie between us would have been invisible. So that's, to me, my favorite thing about being like a public storyteller. It is also like, just mortifying as all get out. Like, you know, like, I, I am a professor at a medical school, like, the idea of the dean of the medical school reading about my Barbie dyke bar, you know? Like, I just, it's so, so embarrassing, you know?

• 33:37Speaker 02

  And so you kind of have to convince yourself in the writing process that, like, no one will ever read it, which is like, the only way I can get myself to do it. And then it comes out, you like desperately hope no one notices and also that everyone buys it. And you have to hold all of those together at the same time, even though they're kind of contradictory. So I'd say both, you know? I'm so relieved that the story, my story is out there and I love hearing from people who have had their own losses and are trying to make meaning about the hardest, you know, seemingly nonsensical, unfair things that have happened in their life. Because I like this club. It's a club you wouldn't want your worst enemy to have to join, but also I think some of the best people are in here. None of us like small talk, you know?

• 34:21Speaker 02

  We tend to have a sense of humor and a sense of perspective. So it's a nice filter for the people that I want to meet, anyway, I would say.

• 34:28Speaker 00

  You gave me this advice, which was really helpful and continues to be really helpful. This was specifically when I was asking you about writing my first book, which I'm still working on. But I think it really applies to like, almost any creative projects, or even most life projects, which is, you said, like, in your head beforehand, there are all the possibilities of what success looks like. And, you know, it's like, does it make a lot of money? Does it get good reviews? Do you connect with people? Does it open doors that you get to, like, give speeches? Like, it wins an award? Like, so many things could be success for this project. And what you said is like, just kind of pick, like, what is the thing that you want from it? Because you're not going to get all of the forms of success. Like, no one does. So what is the one that you care about? And then kind of aim it towards that, rather than trying to shoot at all the possible outcomes.

• 35:14Speaker 00

  Obviously, I'm trying really hard to apply that in my own life. I feel like, how successful have you been at applying that when it comes to your own book and your own creative process?

• 35:22Speaker 02

  Like, most good advice, could I follow it myself? Absolutely not.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm trying. I think, you know, you, you have to have such a ridiculous ego to do this kind of work, particularly if you're writing about your own life, right? That, that your story is worth other people's time and God forbid, they pay like $30 for a hardcover for it? I mean, that's preposterous. And yet, I want them to. I wanted and continue to want, and a large part of my most recent book is about this, is the kind of chasing of shiny prizes to prove to myself that I am good, that I have not let down the people that I love most. And then to be disappointed when your story about that does not win you a bunch of shiny prizes is a little ironic, you know? But of course, like, I want Oprah to call, I want all the things, I want all the things.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  And also, I know that's a piece of myself to be skeptical of. And for me, I am trying to hold that, listen, if one person finds this book, who is a grieving 17-year-old, and it saves them a little bit of pain in their twenties and thirties, if they could learn a little bit from me and the sort of left turns I, I took so that they might avoid some of the pitfalls I fell into, that would be enough. And I do get enough of those letters. And that is the thing. That's the thing. I'm trying to hold on to that.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, we're recording this at TED in, in the conference. And I feel like, one of the things that I personally struggle with in a space like this, where there's all these impressive, incredible people with these accomplishments, is I kind of vacillate between like, this is amazing, I can't believe I get to talk to these people and be in the same room as them. And then, I gotta impress them, I gotta do things, oh, what I have is not enough. And I, it's hard to, to balance those two sides. Because there is, there's the driven ambition, it gets you somewhere, but if you let it take control, then all of a sudden, I'm like, who am I? Why am I a different person when I come to Vancouver? I don't want to be a different person.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  But then, that's truthfully, whether they be on stage or it's like a conversation with just somebody, it's like, oh, wow, everybody here, as is everywhere, like, just a person, right? Except there's like, people who are really dedicating their entire lives to doing amazing things.

• 37:36Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 37:36Speaker 03

  But like, these stories we have in our heads and the Kobi mechanism, these complex Kobi mechanisms that we've developed from the age of 14 or whatever it was.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 37:45Speaker 03

  They are strong and they are loud.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, you want to reject everything before it rejects you.

• 37:51Speaker 03

  I don't know what you're talking about.

• 37:54Speaker 00

  That's, can't beat that comedic timing. That's a perfect joke.

• 37:58Speaker 03

  It's true, it's true.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  Well, Wendy, your latest book, How to Say Goodbye, you didn't actually think that you were going to publish this for the broader audience. It was kind of just a, a project that was for you and for a few people that you knew.

• 38:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I made it eight years ago, something like that, maybe? It was seven years ago? Yeah. And I originally published it, I published it like, as an artist book, just an edition of 200. And I gave it away as gifts with the ask that people would like, pass it on. And that was my distribution methodology that every publisher was really sure taking note of. But I ran out. And people wanted more. So I didn't want to publish it. Because when one publishes a book, there is a whole machinery that you enter. And it becomes about, you know?

• 38:53Speaker 03

  I don't know about marketing and it becomes about getting blurbs and like all of this stuff. And it really becomes not about what the heart of the book is. And similar to what Laurel was saying, like I too have a lot of ambition, you know, that I want things to matter and I want things to connect with people. And this book was so personal to me. It has, you know, drawings of my aunt who I drew while she was dying. It has these people in it who I feel very responsible to and accountable to, people who have since died. And to, I was afraid of attaching those feelings of mine to this book and attaching that machinery to this book because I felt like it would be, what's the word, like disrespectful. And then with some time, I realized that was making the

• 39:38Speaker 03

  whole project about me and that this book was very therapeutic for me to make and it lived that life. And I think it was of service to those 200 people. But when I stepped back and said, this book is no longer about me, this piece of art is for other people and they can make of it what they want or not. It's not about me anymore. Then I felt ready to publish it.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  It also feels like, I mean, it's quite literally the advice that often people give, which is to like, think less about what you're going to get from your work and to like, make it as a gift, to like, think what you're trying to give away, which I think is really hard to put into practice, but almost always is actually the best work. Is like, what is it that the audience needs, rather than what is it that you need?

• 40:19Speaker 03

  Yes. And there becomes like, it's a tricky line because if we're thinking about what the audience needs and we're thinking about being of service to others, a lot of time, we end up tapping into something that is very different than our own gut sense of what we need to make right now, what we're compelled to create. In an ideal situation, I think like, there's something coming through us that is, we're creating something that the audience needs because we all ultimately need the same thing, like on a really deep level. And when we hit that place, we're hitting a really deep resonant note that connects. But I think that there's always a tension between these poles. We all feel it. Maybe some people feel it more in certain directions than others. But with like, this project became a really good metaphor for those tensions for me and like going through those

• 41:04Speaker 03

  stages, like artistically. And I'm happy with where it ended up.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  Oh, I think it's, it's such a beautiful work. And so, um, it was so meaningful to me personally, reading it. There are many things of both of your books that stuck with me, but just in a parallel to the, the honey thing from what looks like bravery. In How to Say Goodbye, one of the things that I think really stuck with me and was emotionally really like hit me in the gut when I read it. And I, I have kept thinking about is because you use visuals and narrative, you're able to, in a way that I've really never seen in a book that is just words, you're able to capture the, the power and the emotional moment of silence. Like, I thought the most powerful pages were quiet, but they, but

• 41:53Speaker 00

  they, there was so much there. But I can't even put it into words because it's beyond words.

• 41:58Speaker 03

  I really appreciate that you got that from it. Um, look, it's a very short book. It's a very spare book. It has maybe 300 words and it tops, maybe 200. It has a drawing or, you know, two on each spread. There isn't much of a narrative, you know, it's a collection of words that I received from people who were caregivers in Zen Hospice. And I combined their words with drawings that I did from observation. There's a lot of white space in it. So that does, that's very deliberate. I think some people pick up their book, they're like, what is this? There's like, there's barely any pictures even. And there's no

• 42:38Speaker 03

  words, like what, but what I was trying to do was to create a reading experience in a book that mirrored the experience that I had inside a hospice home, which is quiet and which is slow, which is very focused. I use a lot of white space in my drawing because for me, drawing is a way to focus in on things that oftentimes I would overlook, maybe because I'm distracted or because I'm afraid to look at it. And I was afraid to look at death. I was afraid to look at somebody who was dying or very sick. I don't know why. That's, I was raised in a family that avoids it. But when my aunt was dying,

• 43:19Speaker 03

  drawing was the way that I could stop, slow down and look really closely at her and in my own way, really be with her. And so the white space in the book also creating that quiet, like focuses in on the person.

• 43:35Speaker 00

  Thank you both for doing this. This was so good. I truly am like, well, we gotta do six more episodes, but

• 43:40Speaker 03

  Okay, cool.

• 43:40Speaker 00

  Of you. Yeah.

• 43:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:41Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 43:42Speaker 03

  Thank you so much.

• 43:42Speaker 05

  Thanks. That was so good.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, thank you.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  Really fun.

• 43:44Speaker 00

  Oh, man. The best.

• 43:48Speaker 00

  That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guests, Laurel Braitman and Wendy McNodd. Laurel's most recent book is called What Looks Like Bravery? And Wendy's most recent book is How to Say Goodbye? But they're also both amazing and constantly making new great work. So find them, follow them, sign up for their newsletters, just generally bask in the glow of their brilliance. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects at chrisduffeycomedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is brought to you on the TED side by the creatively and personally wonderful group that includes Daniela Balarezzo, Banban Chang, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Laney Lott, Antonio Le, and Joseph DeBryne. This episode was fact checked by Julia Dickerson and Mateus Salas, who are in their own individual

• 44:33Speaker 00

  attention club where they pay attention to the details and citations and clarifications that I, quite frankly, would get wrong every single time without them. On the PRX side, our show is put together by a team who, when I ask How to Say Goodbye, send me a pronouncer guide and also an audio example. So I get every single phoneme correct. Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Maggie Gorville, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. And of course, thanks to you for listening to this show and making this all possible. A podcast without listeners is not really a podcast. It's just a man alone in his room talking. If you are listening on Apple, please leave us a five star rating and review. If you're listening on the Spotify app, we have put a discussion question up there on mobile. We would love to hear your thoughts. We love reading them every week. We will be back next week with another episode

• 45:17Speaker 00

  of How to Be a Better Human. In the meantime, pay attention and take care. Thanks for listening.

• 45:28Speaker 00

  This episode is sponsored by Kohler Smart Toilets. The objects we interact with most are often the ones we notice least. Kohler Smart Toilet challenges that assumption. What if the most overlooked space in your home could become the most considered? Their Vail Smart Toilet is a sculptural silhouette that isn't just intentional. It's a philosophy that design changes everything. The Kohler Vail Smart Toilet is sleek with a rounded shape that's more like architecture than just plumbing. And it goes beyond looks. The touchscreen controls and customizable cleansing features offer a level of comfort and cleanliness

• 46:06Speaker 00

  that exceed expectations. It's all about elevating those ordinary daily rituals into something extraordinary through thoughtful design. Kohler has been pushing these boundaries for over 150 years, mastering that balance of stunning form and high performance function. That's a long time to get it right, and it shows in every detail. Experience the difference of Kohler Smart Toilets. Find out more at kohler.com.

• 46:41Speaker 00

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