Stepping Off Now: Lessons in the Art and Craft of Creativity
Stepping Off Now is a podcast about how to live your creative best life. I’m Kendra, a social scientist and writer. I spent decades feeling creatively unfulfilled while I pursued conventional life goals, culminating in severe burnout that took years to recover from. This podcast chronicles my journey in real time as I find my way home to my essential creative self. I discuss topics like harnessing the intuitive creative process, using creativity to manage mental health, and sorting through all the external pressures and expectations to figure out what YOU really want. My hope is that you’ll find inspiration and solace here. You are not alone, and you are stronger and wiser than you know! You can find out more by visiting my website, kendrapatterson.com.
- Update frequency
- every 11 days
- Average duration
- 34 minutes
- Episodes
- 171
- Years Active
- 2020 - 2025
E11. My Experience With Severe Burnout and How I Got Through It
The origin story of this podcast is about burnout. As I was struggling to finish my PhD a few years ago, I suffered from burnout that was so severe I was largely nonfunctional as a human being. In th…
E10. Does Rational Cognition Impede Creativity? (Spoiler: Yep, It Definitely Can)
Do you feel like you have to force creativity, or does it feel like it's harder than it should be? Are you struggling with blocks? It's possible the reason is that you have a habit of applying the ru…
E9. How to Steal Fire from the Gods (The Radical Rebellion of Living a Creative Life)
This week I'm back on the topic of creativity and why it's so important for creative people to give themselves radical permission to do their creative work. So many of us struggle with guilt over tak…
E8. We Have a Societal Addiction to Goal Setting and It's Draining Our Joy
Is it possible to have goals without goals? In this episode, I delve deeper into what I see as the incompatibility between the goal setting, achievement-oriented paradigm and living life experimental…
E7. Let's Stop Playing to Our Strengths
We're told that we should always seek excellence and achievement, and that it's important to be the best - or at least to try. But that kind of approach is antithetical to living life experimentally.…
E6. Feel Like a Late Bloomer? This May Explain Why
Have you spent your life watching people around you hit all the milestones, wondering when your turn will come? Do you feel like there's something you're just not getting about how to do life the rig…
E5. Embracing the Ugly to Increase Creativity and Banish Judgy Voices
In this episode I talk about an exercise I developed called Embracing the Ugly that helps me deal with critical, judgy voices (both the external and internal types), and how it's allowed me tap into …
E4. Being a Gentle Soul (HSP/Intuitive/Empath) in an Ungentle World
Have you ever been called too sensitive, or told you take things too seriously? Are you empathic, intuitive, and/or an HSP? If so, you may be a gentle soul like me. In this episode I talk about this …
E3. Anti-Productivity and My Intentional Practice of Wasting Time
Have you ever noticed that we don't really have a positive way of talking about not being productive? In this episode I discuss the insidious influence our society's ideological obsession with produc…
E2. Using Generative Energy to Tap Into Your Creative Potential
In this episode I talk about the difference between productive and generative energy, and how you can use the latter to realize your creative potential. If you are struggling with completing projects…
E1. One Thing I Got Wrong About "Follow Your Bliss"
Welcome! In this inaugural episode I discuss the origin story of the Stepping Off Now Podcast, including how it got that name. You’ll hear about my experience with burnout, how I got a creative block…