Are you living life on autopilot, checking all the boxes but still feeling stuck? Ever wonder if the path that feels safe is actually keeping you small? What if the real key to freedom and fulfillment is creativity, not just in art, but in how you live, decide, and grow?
In this episode of Actions Antidotes, we’re joined by Pia Liechter, founder of Kollectiv Studio and author of Welcome to the Creative Club. Pia opens up about how divorce, burnout, and losing her job became the turning point that helped her reconnect with her creative power. She takes us through her journey, including a bold ride on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and shares what it means to truly direct your own life instead of following someone else’s script. Pia reminds us that you don’t need permission to rewrite your story. Even small “firsts” can be powerful steps toward a life that feels more like your own.
Listen in and discover how to tap into your creativity, take meaningful risks, and explore a version of life that’s built on your terms, not someone else’s.
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Why Playing It Safe Is Keeping You Small (And What to Do About It) with Pia Liechter
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about something that can often get ignored in the modern world, and that is creativity, creative pursuits, and creative suits can take on so many different forms but can often fall into this bucket of things that the modern day cult of productivity, if you want to call it that, can really ignore as like, okay, it wasn’t really productive for you to spend a Thursday afternoon drawing a picture or something like that. My guest today has her own story around creativity. Pia Leichter is the founder of the Kollektiv Studio.
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Welcome to the program.
Thank you, Stephen. It’s so nice to be here.
Yeah, it’s nice to have you here. And let’s start with your story, because you recently published a book covering your story around kind of discovering your creativity.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, it’s called Welcome to the Creative Club and it smashes the myth that creativity is reserved for the chosen few and invites everyone to access and apply creativity to the design of their lives, and I do share stories about how I lost and found my creative power and also really exploring what creativity means in moving into a much more expansive definition, because, often, what stops us from being creative is the belief or idea that I’m not the creative type. I want to debunk that one, because if you’re human, you’re an artist at play.
So, this sounds like a story that a lot of people have, and if I had a dollar for every time I heard someone around my age say something along the lines of, “I’m just not a creative person, it just happens.” So let’s start with the specifics of your story. So you said you lost and found your creative abilities of some sort.
Well, power, really, because, first, it starts with shifting my own experience or definition of creativity, which happened through different moments or pivots or sticky junctures in my life. For me, growing up with an artist father on the Lower East Side Manhattan, abstract, my dad is an abstract painter, creativity was just something we did. It was just a natural part of life. He’d be painting, I’d be writing stories as a little kid or poems or whatnot. And creativity, later on, I moved into the realm of commercial creativity. I worked in creative studios and age brand agencies for the majority of my career, well over –– 15 years, until I left to start my own business. And so creativity was still very much something I did. When life threw me through the windshield of the car I was driving that needed to get fixed, changed, traded in through a series of events that, say, the divorce, unhealthy rebound relationship, and then getting fired from my six-figure cushy creative partner and creative director role, I kind of sat looking at the shards of what my life was in that moment and decided to, instead of stressing and staying and trying to figure out what to do next, I decided to check off a bucket list desire and go on the Trans-Siberian Express, which I’ve always dreamed about. Felt like every –– I had lost everything, felt like I was lost, so I decided to change it up. And it was while I was on the train, hurtling through Siberia, looking around me, looking at the Russian man who drank too much vodka who was punching the steel wall and looking at the socks hanging and the smell of sauerkraut and looking at the scenery and kind of sitting back and reflecting on, I had the epiphany that, “Oh, I’m creatively directing my life. I creatively directed this scene. I brought myself here.” I could have chosen a variety of different things, but I chose to put myself on a train across China, Mongolia, and Russia and switch the scenery, switch the set design, and kind of rediscover that I’m the one sitting in the director’s chair. And so creativity started to shift for me.
So what creativity meant started to change. So, creativity wasn’t just something that we do. It is that too, but it’s a way of being in the world. Share on XSo, what I’m ––
That was losing and finding my creative power. So, creative power is my ability to create my experience. So I lost that. I was in the middle of three Ds, drunk, divorce, and actually then death later on but there’s another story. It’s also in the book. It kind of shook me. It felt like life was happening to me. It felt like I was just a passenger, an extra on set. And then making that big decision and choosing to go on the Trans-Siberian and then sitting and just kind of reflect on it, it’s like, “Oh, wait a minute, I’m not an extra. This is main character energy right here. I made this. I creatively directed this,” and that’s sort of some of the background of what prompted me to write the book.
So, you’re talking about kind of this creative power but you’re also talking about this perspective shift, and I think kind of even going back to the way I introduced the podcast is the way a lot of people think about creativity, of, okay, creativity means getting out a canvas and drawing a painting or I’m going to play a little beat and do a little bit of freestyle rapping into the mirror, but it has that kind of somewhat narrow, I don’t know, just only in the fine arts type definition, and maybe there are some people where those types of pursuits don’t really call them. They’re not going to go to the open mic night and do kind of a random standup or do impromptu speaking somewhere, but you’re saying that it has a bigger definition and it sounds like it could be around even just all these decisions that you make, even if like today, between recording podcasts, it’s like am I going to cook something for lunch or am I going to go to Taco Bell or something.
Totally, totally. And, I mean, what you just described is creativity is often associated solely with artistic expression. And that is one big form of creativity, absolutely, but it’s not the only one. Science is immensely creative. Crime is creative but, ultimately, how we choose to create our next scene, how when we’re in touch with our unique essence, the way we see life, the way we respond to everyday challenges in novel, original, unexpected, and delightful and useful ways and throughout one day is immensely creative. The way our brain works, neuroscience points to this, we’re wired for creativity. It’s what enabled our survival. So, that is the invitation to see it in a much more expansive way because that’s how we reclaim it.
Do the two forms of creativity, the more narrow artistic definition that many people think of it as as well as your expanded version of it relate to one another? Can someone take on artistic pursuits and that kind of train their brain around this more expansive type of creativity around designing your life?
Well, because creativity isn’t just solely artistic pursuits, and it’s so much more than that, that’s not the only way to build your creative muscle. That is one way but really interesting in my research, travel actually is a fantastic way, based on research, to build your creative muscle because you are going to be in new and unexpected environments, and travel could be far or nearby, and it’s going to require different creative responses.
Does that mean also just taking on, say, a different type of activity, like let’s just say ––
Definitely.
–– you never played pickleball before for some reason, and just being like, “Okay, I’m gonna try it out now.”
Yeah, definitely. I think there’s a correlation between uncertainty in first times and experimentation and building our creative capacity, for sure, but that can take many different forms because, again, when we look at the story of, “Well, if I’m drawing, does that help me creating my life?” it’s still equating creativity with artistic, like, yes, that is one way but there are many others.
Yeah, it sounds like there’s a ton of others. What do you think gets in the way of people being creative today? You have your story around the things that happened to you in your life. What do you think happens to a lot of other people?
Well, I think we’re handed scripts about how we should live. Often, stories. I call them scripts but they’re beliefs or stories about life, about what we’re capable of, about how it’s supposed to be, about the path we’re supposed to be on and what’s meant for us but someone else dictates it that can shrivel our creative expression. And so many times it’s about becoming aware of what script am I reading from? Is it, for example, life is working with me or is life, is it a dog eat dog world? What story are we running in the background that influences our behavior? What have we said yes to that maybe we really wanted to say no to?
because if you’re creating from your unique place of who Stephen Jaye is, there’s only one Stephen Jaye, when you’re creating from that space, it’s going to look different than anything else. Your path might look very different and maybe it’s not what people told you, your parents told you you should do or society says you should do. Maybe it looks extremely different. It probably will, and it’s trusting that and creating from that place that helps you rediscover, I think, what you’re passionate about and your own creative expression.
We can really get into the script, and the script will even tell you, in your experience, that cushy six-figure job probably sounds to me a lot like the script, and then, of course ––
Totally.
–– living in that, you could become obsessed with doing well at your job. You can become obsessed with how do I move up? How do I get the next promotion? How do I, in the more fearful times at any company, how do I not lose my job? That all can become really consuming and prevent people from thinking about even the basics, like who am I and what do I do best, where am I at my best?
And, to me, getting curious about, hey, who am I? What do I really want to do? What do I really want to create in my life? Operative word, “create.” What do I really want to make real? What do I want to explore? I mean, I think that curiosity is definitely fuel for creativity. You cannot be creative without curiosity. It’s not possible. And judgment, judgment and curiosity don’t mix, which is beautiful because when the judge starts to appear whenever we’re about to try to do something new or different, we can choose to get curious instead and that just silences that voice.
When I imagine anyone out there listening probably at some point you had an idea. At some point you’ve had an idea where you’ve maybe wanted to start a business around something, start a community group around something, just try a different habit, try something else, and you’ve probably expressed that idea. It’s a part of life. And when you expressed an idea the same way whenever anyone expressed an idea to you, then it seems like your responses could be a response of curiosity or response of judgment.
Yeah, absolutely. So the curiosity, the curious response would be, “Oh, what might that be like?” and the judgment is, “Oh, no, what are you thinking of? What, are you nuts? You’re gonna fail it. Oh, don’t even try it.” So we get to choose. We get to choose which one we want to activate or which one we want to strengthen or which one we want to listen to. And back to what you said about the story about my work and cushy and six figure, yeah, I mean, it was really good and I was very successful at it until it felt limiting, until it felt like I’ve been here, I’ve done this, I know what this is like, I know what’s involved, I know where the ceiling is, I know where the walls are, I could feel the floor beneath my feet, and something else was calling me. I wonder what would happen if I channeled my creativity into building my own business? But I was too afraid and comfortable to really take that leap.
And the comfort can really be an impediment too because I always think about people I see around who are, whatever city I’m living in, immigrants to the country and they have very few opportunities so they’re like hustling some kind of a business. I used to live in Chicago and we have this group of people that go around selling tamales to people at bars late at night. So, if you’re at a bar in Chicago, especially in the northwest side, anytime between, say, 9:30 PM and 3:30 in the morning, all of a sudden, just someone might slam on this cooler and yell tamales and then you can buy them and I never asked them how much money they make because they’re usually kind of in a hurry to go but, obviously, they seem to be doing pretty well and they’ve expanded. There’s a relative lack of comfort in the whole situation. And then I think about when you get into that comfortable job, there becomes a lot more to lose, a lot more to give up, a lot more potential downside even to going your own way and trying to find something new.
Absolutely.
And risk is also required for creativity. Share on XI mean, we need to be able to take risk and ––I mean, we will take risks. We have to make bets in our imagination and see what happens. And so –– I mean, sometimes, life helps us along. I mean, for me, what gave me a kick in the peach and gave me a shot of courage was my mother passed away suddenly in 2021 and besides being heart shattering, her passing was really a reminder that, hey, this life here, it’s a limited series. There’s going to be a season finale and we don’t know when it’s going to be. What am I really afraid of? What’s the unknown in the face of the biggest unknown? And, if not now, when? And so that that helped me leap and leave my job and go like, okay, I mean, I want to feel alive while I’m here. Fear, to me, comes down to uncertainty. We fear the unknown, and, often, when we’re about to leap or jump, we don’t know or create anything. We don’t know what it’s going to be like. And so that can keep us tethered to a safer space, a smaller space, but it’s a known space. And the invitation is to untether, to unleash, to try, to create, to explore, to experiment and see what might happen because we got really nothing to lose if you think about it in the big, grand scheme of things. There’s going to be one day where we lose everything. What is this in comparison? Nothing. That helps me. Death helps me.
Yeah. It’s something that a lot of people think about, and a lot of people probably think about more often than I do, but that day when you took the big leap, you decided, “Okay, I’m gonna leave my job, I’m gonna start my own studio,” that there are those natural thoughts around, okay, what do I have to lose? You have to lose that comfortable job and that relatively comfortable living with this uncertain outcome, but you said you overcame that fear by thinking, really thinking a lot broader.
Absolutely. And also, I saw quite quickly that entrepreneurship ended up being the gym that enabled me to me to strengthen my muscle to be in uncertainty. And I think life is uncertain so it gave me a chance to redesign my relationship with life, like how do I want to be with that? Everything is uncertain. We have the illusion of safety. In many ways, we can create it. Getting a salary also does that but, in reality, anything can happen, right?
Yeah, you can get laid off whenever.
Yeah, exactly. And so why is it important to build that uncertainty muscle? Because when I’m able to build my capacity to be in uncertainty, I’m free. I’m free to take risks. I’m free to do different things. I’m free to try because I’m learning, like, okay, it’s uncertain but I’m not going to –– I’ll be okay. I’m not going to die. I mean, maybe at some point but not now, like it’s I’ll be okay. And then I create evidence for myself. Yeah, I can jump and I’ll catch myself. I might get scuffed but I’ll be okay. And then the next jump gets easier. It doesn’t get easy, but it gets easier. And that’s been a beautiful discovery that it’s actually much more than just starting a business, it’s actually redesigning my relationship with life, and that felt really empowering.
And how long did it take from the moment that you jumped into entrepreneurship to the point where you felt like your entire relationship with uncertainty, your entire relationship with fear, your outlook on life, when did you realize that that was suddenly, “Oh, it’s different than it was before”?
Well, first off, I think it’s a practice, like I’m going to be forever practicing this and then I’ll level up, the stakes will get higher, it’ll be more uncertain, I’ll just keep growing but it’s definitely a lifelong practice. It took me maybe after the first year and a half, I noticed my anxiety lessen a lot about where is the next business is going to come from? What if –– what am I gonna do? Because I still felt a lot of that, and that’s okay. That’s part of it. And then about a year and a half in, it quieted. It still popped up now and again, but it didn’t feel as like chokehold-y in the way it did at times, and it just kind of like, “All right, I’m surviving, I’m thriving. This is working out. I can trust. I’m okay.” But the only way that I could create that shift, that state was to go through it. You see what I mean? That’s the only way. And I feel that the more, again, it’s like strengthening a muscle, the more that I’m practicing, the freer I feel. And it doesn’t mean fear doesn’t come up or anxiety doesn’t rear its head, but not in a debilitating way, not in a way that stops me and I want more of that because it makes me feel alive.
Now, did your process start with this big jump of entrepreneurship or were there smaller moves you had made in the couple years before that that kind of warmed you up for this big jump?
Oh, I think I’ve been strengthening my calf muscles for a long time, but I think the energy behind it shifted because I’ve moved around my whole life. I’ve made some pretty big jumps. It was motivated by something different. It’s because I was just used to change. I grew up moving my whole life. My parents moved. It’s just what I had known. This felt more conscious, felt more of like a conscious choice, so it felt like I am leaping not away from something –– or I’m not running to or from something, I’m making a conscious choice, because this is something that I want to create for myself rather than a default, if that makes sense. So but there have been ––- there were a lot of small jumps. I think there’s this great quote and I never remember who said it, but it’s everybody wants transformation but nobody wants to change.
I think transformation is a slow, cooked meal. It’s subtle shifts. They’re different ways, different smaller hops that you take that lead you up to the leaps that you need to take in the future. Share on XThose smaller hops, and they start really small. Let’s say someone out there listening did not grow up moving around and grew up kind of in an environment that was very stable, very safe, very by the script, by the routine. Can it just start with something as simple as I’m going to pick this day, I have nothing to do, and look up the weirdest museum in my city and just go there? So just something like that.
Absolutely. I do love a first time. I think another way of doing that is just to get curious. That’s a great example of also a first time. What could you do for the first time and then see how that feels, see what it’s like. Those are little hops because you’re moving into uncertainty. Whenever we do something for the first time, we don’t know what is it going to be like. We don’t know what the experience would be. I was just in Bali and I really wanted to learn how to surf. I had this whole idea in my head that it was going to be much easier than it was. I don’t know what I thought, I was going to hop on the board and be like…but it was actually pretty hard. It was really hard. And I got scared. The surf coach was behind me, and then he’s saying, “Paddle, paddle, paddle,” and then, “Stand up,” and my body just wouldn’t stand up. My mind was like, we’re not…and it was cool because I got a chance to observe my fear in the moment. I’m like, whoa, what is this fear about? It’s just surfing. It’s because I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t know what would happen when I stood up. I didn’t know what was on the other side. And then the fear dissipated after –– I also had a lot of compassion for myself. Okay, cool, I didn’t stand up four times in a row. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to try again. I’m going to try again. Until, finally, I stood up, not very elegantly but I stood up nonetheless, and it just reminded me in that moment that doing things for the first time is going to be inherently uncertain and it’s a great way to observe our fear if it comes up and then to decide how we want to be with it, and I think that’s a muscle builder. So anything for the first time.
And one of the biggest fears that a lot of people encounter is the fear of ostracism, the fear of some sort of negative feedback or negative perception about them and that’s what prevents people from getting up on stage, singing, dancing, etc. Is overcoming that fear in any way different or similar to overcoming a fear around something along the lines of, okay, when I go surfing, if I don’t stand up on the board, I might just end up in the ocean and have to try to frantically swim my way out.
Well, what’s similar about it is we have ideas of what might happen, just like I had ideas of how I would surf, but we don’t know. So when you stand up on stage, you don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know if someone’s going to say you suck or you’re amazing. I mean, we don’t know. So why don’t you try and find it out first before you assume someone is going to ostracize you or criticize you? It might happen. Because the book is deeply personal, I was really afraid –– I remember, right before I had to publish it, I had a big wobble, it’s like do I really want to let this smoke out into the world? I shared a lot of vulnerable stories in service of the reader, in service of the story, but it felt vulnerable. What if someone critiques it? What if someone tears me apart? What if many things? Judges me? Who knows? And of course, I got over it. The book is out there. Inevitably, if you’re taking the brave steps and you’re really putting yourself out there, people will either like what you do or they won’t like what you do. Everyone has different opinions. And so how do we want to be with that when it happens? And there’s only one way to find out, let it happen. So it happened to me, right? So, someone, of course –– someone wrote a two-star review and I remember how I felt. I was so afraid of that. I was like, “Ugh, someone didn’t like it.” And then I had my moment, that’s okay, the feeling. And then, afterwards, it dawned on me that, (a), it wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Yeah, so a person didn’t like it. And, two, there’s, I don’t know if Mel Robbins, I didn’t read her book but I heard her on a podcast and she has the let them theory which was really helpful for me at the time. Let them have their experience. Who am I to say what someone else’s experience of me or my work should be? Who am I to do that? Let that person have their experience. Whether they love it or they hate it, let them have their experience. It has nothing to do with me. That’s theirs. And it was really helpful to be able to make that separation, like whatever it is you do or put out into the world, whether you’re at work or whether you’re on stage or whether you’re on a surfboard, I mean, how other people interpret or judge or feel about whatever it is you’re doing is not yours, it belongs to them. That’s not our job. Our job is not to worry about that. And I found that incredibly helpful, because even on the surfboard, I was like, “Oh, God, the surf instructor is gonna think I suck,” and I caught myself saying that and I was like it doesn’t matter what he thinks, it’s not about that. We catch ourselves and then it’s like, “Oh, come on, girls, really –– I mean, really, is that what I’m worried about?” It doesn’t matter. And then I have a laugh at myself and I move on. And so I think, most often, the things we fear the most, when we start to walk towards them, they shrink as they get closer. It just feels really big because we’re imagining this outcome. Our imaginations are wild, very creative. We’re imagining this big outcome. It’s just one possibility and you won’t know unless you try. Can you imagine if we censored ourselves and stopped ourselves at every corner from doing something that felt meaningful because we were afraid of what someone might say or think? So what someone says they don’t like it. You know what I mean? It’s okay. It’s actually not as bad when it happens. It’s not fun, okay? It didn’t feel good to me, I felt like, ugh, for that night when I got that two-star review but it passed. And you know what? It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.
I mean, it’s just one review on a site. It’s ––
Just one review. And that’s the whole funny thing about us humans, right? Instead of focusing on the five-star reviews, my brain just immediately went to the one two-star review and it’s like what’s wrong with –– let me refocus. Let me focus on celebrating all these wonderful people that had great things to say and also acknowledging, sure, that wasn’t that person’s cup of tea, no problem.
Yeah, and you’re not going to resonate with every single person.
No. And I think if you do, it’s usually like you’re kind of Wonder Bread, you’re like right in the middle. You’re not really –– it’s the old saying in advertising, like Marmite. Remember the advertising –– Marmite is like this yeast spread they use in Australia and they have an ad campaign that’s like you either love it or hate it, which is very true. People either love it or –– it tastes very yeasty. If you elicit a love or hate response, it means that your work touched somebody.
Yeah, even that hate is a touch, right?
Yeah. Well, absolutely, it’s a big response. Yeah. You’d rather get, “I hated this,” than a meh.
You’ll get that response from the person who’s just jealous. They wish they had an idea themselves. They wish they had some sort of direction and they’re stuck somewhere dumb and they just want to tear you down because that makes them feel better in the moment, even though it never makes anyone feel better long term.
Or they might also just be a frustrated creative. Sometimes we wish we had the courage to do certain things and when we see other people displaying that bravery, it can elicit that grr response.
Yeah. Yeah.
Because you know deep inside that that’s something you’d really like to do. And I think it’s also good to become self-aware and get curious. If I feel that like, “Oh, why didn’t I do that?” that response, that’s telling me something about a desire I have that might be unfulfilled.
So, I also want to take some time to talk about the Kollektiv Studio, what goes on there, the business that you formed. You said you formed it about four years ago?
Yeah, three and a half, something like that. Kollektiv Studio is where I creatively partner with unconventional dreamers, visionary rebels, and inspired misfits to bring their wild visions and ventures into the world to make an impact. The simple version of that is I help people create. Whether people are looking to create a brand, create a venture, a book, a business, I’m their creative partner in that. Now, depending on where they are in their creative journey, it could be a founder, it could be an executive, it could be a creative, could be an artist, but usually it’s people who do things differently to make a difference. Hence, all of the words I used in the beginning.
Oh, yeah.
And depending on where they are, I partner with them to provide, I could provide creative –– bring in the creative mix so creative strategy, creative direction, copywriting, bringing in all of my years working in the agency world into the mix. But I also am a certified coach so if someone comes to me and it’s like they have an idea of what it could be but it’s not clear, it’s kind of hazy, and they need help, like creative midwifery, I call it, like a creative midwife. Help to birth, like, okay, I kind of can see it, something is pulling me, I’m at this crossroads, I know I could do more, I’m feeling stuck, what might that thing be that I want to create? Then I can partner with them and create that kind of journey. And, oftentimes, what’s really wonderfully rewarding and fulfilling is to then switch gears, when they’ve had the vision, co-created the vision, there is clarity around what stops them, what motivates them, what impact this will have on their lives, and then it’s bringing that to life through writing ideas and seeing that actually be realized in the world, because that’s where I get –– I’m like an air and fire person, it’s like the air of like imagination, like what could this be, and really being a partner and helping to create that and then bringing it to life.
So does it often start with someone who has, say, a problem they want to address but maybe not the solution yet and someone might come in and say, “I wanna make camping easier for people who have both a dog and a cat, but I don’t know what to do yet”?
I mean, they could come to me for that if they wanted to, I’d be happy to help them. It really depends. So I’ll give you an example. So I worked with this fantastic woman, interior –– she had a very strong interior design brand, that’s what she did was interior design, and she wanted to move into becoming a lifestyle brand so a much bigger platform and a much bigger vision. She’s like, “I have no idea how to do that.” And so that was sort of a pivot and expansion moment. When there’s something that’s looking to be expanded, that’s usually where I also can slot in. For example, I had another client of mine that was mission based ecommerce but wanted to expand from one product to the many and needed, like, what’s the story? How do I communicate this? Why is this important to me? And really getting under the skin of that. I also worked with someone more in coaching journey so it could be an author who –– one author was blocked just from finalizing her manuscript and couldn’t figure out what was going on so we worked together to figure out what that was. She unleashed herself and then actually worked a bit on some of the first round editing work with her. So it could also look like working as a fractional creative director, where I come in and do brand strategy and campaign work. So really I tailor journeys for each specific case and person and human that I work with, and it’s really exciting stuff. For me, creative partnership is the operative word. That’s why I don’t call myself a creative director or even a creative midwife, which is nice, it’s poetic, but it’s not very clear, but I’m not a creative consultant, I’ve done that.
And it sounds like there’s also a personal work component of it, of what could be getting in someone’s way, someone’s a founder of a business and they’re like, “Okay, why is it not taking off? Why am I not getting the results I wanna get?”
Absolutely. That’s the really interesting part is if we can’t divorce what we’re building or creating from the person creating it, and often we do that. We separate it. We’re like, “Oh, well, there’s a playbook for this and this is exactly what I should be doing but, for some reason, it’s not working for me. I don’t know why.” Well, because you’re following someone else’s playbook. We need to figure out what your playbook is and what’s really calling you and how are you going to create this from your own authentic place so that you not only build a business but build a business that enables the life that you want to live and inhabit.
Yeah, yeah, because people could be building something and they could still be going by some kind of other playbook because there’s a script around, get the job, get the comfy life, but business, building a business can also have a script around a whole bunch of standards ––
Definitely.
–– and this is how you plan your exit. What if you don’t want to exit? What if you want to have it be a lifestyle business that you kind of pass on to your children or something?
Definitely. And, oftentimes, when we’re doing it our way, it’s why the clients I work with have rebellious tendencies. When you’re doing it your own way, it will look different. It just will because it’s yours. And we often look for things that are proven or that worked for that person so I’m just going to take that and apply it to me. And, sometimes, it does. There are, of course, things to learn from people, there are elements to learn, but, often, I think we really have to forge our own path because that’s where our fulfillment lives and our growth.
And what distinguishes someone who has rebellious tendencies from general population, I guess?
Well, I think we all have some rebellion in us, if you ask me, but it’s more about do we allow that part to come out? Do we listen to it? Because I don’t think there’s people that have it and people that don’t. I think, in many ways, we’re all individual but connected and all have our own unique ideas and own unique creative expression and way of being in the world. We sometimes just lose touch with that. And so the rebelliousness is connected to risk as well. Saying, excuse my language, “Fuck it. I’m gonna do his thing and I’m gonna try and it doesn’t matter if everyone tells me I’m gonna fail or if I’m not following what you know X, John, Dick, or Harry said about it, I’m just gonna do it my way because I feel moved to do it that way, because I’m feeling called, because that feels fulfilling, because that feels like where my growth lives. I’m just gonna do it.” So the difference is if we act on it, but I think everyone has those sweet, rebellious tendencies. Not everyone acts on it though.
Yeah, and it sounds like it relates to what you were saying before about the uncertainty, because following a path that’s already been followed, it creates this illusion of certainty that, “Okay, if I do this, I get that,” whereas following your own path, you have no idea how someone will respond to whatever you’re saying because it may make some people feel uncomfortable because it’s not what they’re used to seeing.
Totally. And, sometimes, we’re fed this idea that, well, if I just do this, then I’ll feel happier, then life will be A-okay. And, oftentimes, we get to that place, whether it’s the next salary increase, the next sale, the next title, the next car, whatever it might be, and realize that that’s not where fulfillment lives, or it’s not, “Hey, I thought I was gonna get this thing and now I’m here and I don’t have this thing,” so getting really curious –– once again, curiosity –– about what success looks like to you. What does it mean to you? And what is that feeling you’re after? Because, oftentimes, you’re really after a feeling, not a possession, not a thing, but a feeling, like, for me, that would be freedom and we can get stuck in this cultural script, it’s like, well, when we’re on the other side of it, when tomorrow it will come, just right after the next thing, and then we get caught in the cycle of never having the thing and always searching for the thing, and the thing is kind of always here. It’s about getting curious and closer to what it is you’re really after.
And it sounds like when it comes to this curiosity versus judgment dichotomy, the person we need to work on how we respond to is ourselves. Are we being curious about our own feelings or judgmental about our own feelings? And so anyone out there gets in a situation like you had where it’s like, okay, I’m at this job and the script, society, my upbringing, anything else tells me I’m supposed to be loving it and I’m supposed to be satisfied and I’m supposed to have gotten there, yet I don’t feel satisfied, I don’t feel fulfilled. How are you going to respond to your own feeling? Are you judging yourself or are you being curious? Why am I not feeling like this is right? Why am I not feeling this euphoria that I was raised to feel around this particular accomplishment?
Absolutely. And that can be quite jarring, because the thing that we thought was true, we discover might not be, and then what? Well, then, the adventure begins.
Yeah, that’s a good way to look at it too, as an adventure as opposed to some sort of like disruption because I’m sure plenty of people have those experiences and they don’t look at it as an adventure.
The known is comfortable and it is safe, and there’s room for safety and comfort. It’s nice to sometimes curl up on the couch and watch a Netflix series and I’m not saying that –– there’s a place for that too, but if we get addicted to that known-ness and get lulled by it, the comfort, we don’t really get to experience the full flavorful fat of life or maybe we don’t take the risks of what’s really calling us. And there is, I think, at least there was for me, there was a felt sense that this isn’t quite it, but I needed something to shake me up and out. It didn’t take death or divorce or major life events to shake me up again. The first time it did, to like kick me out, “Get up! Get changed!” But then, afterwards, they became more conscious choices about, like, okay, no, I can do this. This is good. So, as I said before, it gets easier, and I think that’s something important and I just want to convey that it might feel really rough the first time and maybe not like an adventure but if you’re moving in the direction of something that has meaning for you and that’s calling you, it’s worthwhile.
Yeah. And where do you feel now, now that you’re kind of a few years beyond this whole getting kicked by life, taking the big leap, continued practice, I know you said that it wasn’t an end game, continued practice around this intentionality, getting out of your comfort zone and creating your own life? What is your day to day life now and how is it, I guess, different from either what it was in the past or what most people who are living by the script are feeling?
Well, here’s the thing that I’ve been learning. I’m like a recovering speed queen from New York City so I have been –– the script that I’ve been given or reared on is like blood, sweat, and tears, push, push, push, drive, drive, if you don’t do it, then everything’s going to fall apart, keep –– like busyness, action, movement, go, doing, right? And it’s been pretty hard to wean myself off of that because I felt safety in movement and I am teaching myself to feel safety in stillness. That doesn’t mean that I can’t activate my superpower. One of my superpowers is a lot of energy. So, the question is am I driving it or is it driving me? Is it conscious or unconscious? Am I just on autopilot where I’m in the same pattern of push or am I consciously channeling my drive? These are big questions, so I’m getting to your question. So, despite practicing trying to like lean back and not always lean forward, especially when building a business, I think it’s when writing a book, when doing things like, I’ve been –– my foot’s been on the gas. I don’t know what happened. It’s just, I’ve been conscious of it, but there was a switch, a little bit of a shift of what if I just trusted instead? What if I showed up? I show up for the work, I show up for myself, I show up for my art, I show up for my business, but I don’t push all the time. What if I lean back a little bit? What if I get curious and see what’s coming my way when the blinders are off? If I trust that I will survive and I’ll be okay without having to pedal to the metal it or balls to the wall it all the time, and this has been a practice. I’ve been doing this since I –– because I’ve been very aware of this autopilot thing, and it’s starting to get really interesting because I’m doing more of it and I’m able to see more opportunities come my way in a different way than I did when I was forcing or trying to control. And so this has been a really interesting development. For me, it’s a forever practice. It’s not a destination. It’s not like one day I’m going to arrive and I’m just there. It’s just there’d be different days and that’s kind of where I’m at right now. Going to Bali for three weeks and giving myself that, it was my birthday, that was my gift, and being able to really unplug, sometimes I had to force myself in the beginning to unplug, but it allowed me to kind of see this, to see it, just to lean back and to trust more. And I heard a –– I got a little download from the universe and it said, “Girl, get out of the driver’s seat sometimes. Give me some space. Let me take you places.” It felt like such a beautiful message because it’s true. If I’m always driving and pushing, I’m not going to see all the other opportunities and ways that things might already be happening for me. I’m just too busy and too focused to notice. And the more that I test this theory, the more it’s proven to be true. It’s really fascinating. Instead of trying to force exactly what my business needs to be or what I need to do, what happens when I just –– I show up but I see what comes my way, and that’s been the experiment. That’s been where I’ve been at.
And that sounds like another example of the whole stepping into uncertainty because you were certainty of driving and go, go, go, and now you’re stepping into the uncertainty of, okay, if I just let things come to me in this world, who knows what will happen, but maybe if I set the right intentions, it’ll be the right things.
Yeah, exactly. Maybe like –– because I’m still showing up for things, right? I’m still following my gut. I’m trying to navigate my way between leaning back, leaning forward, and parking the car, you know what I mean? And I find that that’s going to be forever a practice like, oh, am I leaning forward too much? Oh, I need to –– am I getting caught in old patterns and old stories? If I don’t push, I won’t survive, that’s the story, right? If I don’t drive hard, I’m not going to make it. That’s the story. That’s the fear story. And that’s not a story I want to follow and I’m like, my God, it’s exhausting and I’ve done that before. I know what that’s like. I want to follow the story of what happens if I trust and lean back? What the heck might come my way? I want to do that, thank you very much.
Finally, anyone listening, first of all, interested in your book, where can someone find it? Is it something someone can find on Amazon or any other place?
It’s available at all your retail –– I always want to make a voice, like, “Available at all cinemas near you.” No, it’s Amazon. The audiobook has just launched, just released so it’s on Audible, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, bookshop.org, all the places.
Wonderful. So people like me that choose not to do Amazon, actually, because I’d rather support ––
Yeah, bookshop.org, that’s why that was an important one for me because I know a lot of people feel that way. Audible is really hard when it comes to an audiobook not to be there.
Excellent, and that is Welcome to the Creative Club. And then if anyone’s interested in the Kollektiv Studio, what would be the best way to check that out?
Kollektiv.studio. Kollektiv is spelled in a Danish way so maybe we’ll put it in the show notes, because it’s K, O, L, L, E, K, T, I, V, dot, studio, and that’s where you can find out more about different ways of co-creating and collaborating and about the book and newsletters and all the stuff.
Anything else. Well, that is wonderful. Pia, thank you so much for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes, telling us how we could be curious rather than judgmental, telling us how we can just embrace stepping into the unknown and embrace doing it in a way that’s authentic and intentional to who we really are as opposed to following a script that someone else wrote for us and, oftentimes, to serve that other person or other group of people’s interests.
Boom! Dropping that gem right before we go. Absolutely.
Stories serve someone. The question is, is it serving you? Share on XYeah, 100 percent. So, hopefully, that’s something that’s better than what Google Gemini would do if it would like to pull up this episode and give you that little summary. And then I would also like to thank everybody out there for listening today, for being open to a discussion that could be a little bit more uncomfortable than possibly a different podcast that might be a little bit safer for you and a little bit more into your comfort zone.
And thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
It’s been wonderful.
Important Links:
- Get a copy of her book:
On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Creative-Club-Biggest-Project/dp/B0DPJ8L4NM/ref=sr_1_1
On Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/welcome-to-the-creative-club-make-life-your-biggest-art-project-pia-mailhot-leichter/22087658 - And the audiobook: https://www.audible.com/pd/Welcome-to-the-Creative-Club-Audiobook/B0F6VZCWT4
- Connect on social:
- More about her work: https://kollektiv.studio/
- Book a chemistry call: https://calendly.com/kollektivstudio/coaching-exploration-call
Connect through weekly field notes: https://kollektiv.studio/newsletter
About Pia Liechter
Pia Leichter is a creative partner, published author, certified coach, and entrepreneur. Her path has been anything but ordinary: a recovering nomad, she’s reported as a journalist in Sri Lanka, graduated summa cum laude from NYU, and worked as an award-winning creative director for some of the biggest brands in the world. Now, as the founder of Kollektiv Studio, she’s uniquely positioned to co-create wild visions and ventures.
She recently published Welcome to the Creative Club, a book that challenges everything people thought they knew about creativity. Praised by Google’s Global Head of Creative & Innovation as “life-changing” and by iconic fashion designer Betsey Johnson as “a wild ride,” this part-memoir, part-guide invites readers to make life their biggest art project and reclaim their creative power.