The ideas are the thing that AI can't do. AI, that everybody's so afraid of, AI can give us the pieces, but the piece that's missing that only we as humans can do is to take those pieces, get the new ideas, and then put them out. That is the creative process. Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast that encourages you to become your best virtuosa self. Each week Dr. Susan Crockett goes where the scalpel can't reach, exploring conversations about how to be, heal, love, give, grow, pray, and attune. For the first time ever, she's bringing the personal one on one teaching that she shares with individual patients to you on this broader platform. A weekly source of inspiration and encouragement designed to empower you. By evolving ourselves as individuals. We influence and transform the world around us. Please help me welcome board certified OB-GYN specializing in minimally invasive GYN surgery, internationally in the top 1% of all GYN robotic surgeons, a certified life coach, and US News top doctor, your host Susan A. Crockett, MD. I'm your host, Dr. Susan Crockett. I'm an OB-GYN in San Antonio, Texas. I practice as a minimally invasive GYN surgeon, which means I'm a robotic surgeon, and that's what I do in my business life. But this is The Dr. Crockett Show, and we go where the scalpel doesn't reach. We're bringing you all kinds of wellness tips. Today I have a very special episode for you. Today, we're talking about creativity is medicine. If you like the show, I hope you like, subscribe, and share with your friends because this is how we grow and reach others, and our whole goal is to make everybody's life a little bit better. Because we believe that if we help others become the best virtuousa versions of themselves, that that is how we help our planet to become the best version of itself. So, creativity. Creativity as a medicine, or it is a medicine. If you're just new to the program, you probably don't know that I was a musician first way before I was a physician. Growing up, it was literally my first language. I remember banging on my mama's piano. We had a little piano in the house. As a three-year-old, I remember trying to crawl up on it, and she would not let me touch it. She just wouldn't let me play on it. So for my fourth birthday, when I turned four years old, she gave me piano lessons at my friend Glenda Bailey's mom's house. My cute little friend Glenda, her mom, was a piano teacher. So I started piano at that age, and I played piano all the way up through, I guess I was about 14 or so, got to the level of doing concertos and competitions, and realized my hands were a little bit too small to reach an octave. So, these itty-bitty hands transitioned to playing the oboe. I played in symphonies all throughout med school and residency. I have some great stories from that I'll share with you on some other episodes. But the main thing about it was these little hands had some creativity in them, and I translated that creativity from music over the years into the art of being a surgeon. That's right. I see surgery very much as a creative experience. Every time I look inside a patient to take care of them, my brain automatically goes to okay, here are the pieces that were given, and how are we going to navigate this and make it work to do the best possible surgery for our patients? That's very much the creative process. Now, most of you probably aren't surgeons, but I bet you have your own creativity in your life. Think about it. Some examples of creativity in your own life. Do you like doing hair and makeup? Do you like clothes and fashion? Are you a fellow content creator? Maybe you're a video game content creator. Maybe you like writing. Maybe you like different kinds of art. We have some art stuff represented here today. Maybe you like photography. I've got a camera. Maybe you like sewing or cooking. I thought this little book up here, Color Mixing Recipes, was kind of cute because it mixes the art thing with the cooking, which is a big part of The Dr. Crockett Show. Do you like gardening? Do you like working out and creating a better body? Let's get a little bit more esoteric. Do you like creating a better lifestyle? Are you creating a lifestyle that you want to live? Are you creating a family? Are you creating something in the world that you and you alone can do for the world? Those are all types of creativity. So, what is it about creativity that is so very, very positive for us? Let's talk a little bit about the difference between consumption and creativity. So, consumption is what we do when we are sitting and taking in information. That could be reading a book. It could be watching a TV show. It could be watching a movie. It could be watching this Dr. Crockett Show. In fact, this is a really interesting interaction right here between me and you, showing me creating the show and the content for you, and you consuming or watching me produce the show for you. They're symbiotic. One is not better than the other, but having a balance in our lives is really important. Because when all we do is consume, when all we do is sit on the couch potato like in WALL-E, it's not healthy for us. Also, at least an increased risk of depression. So, one of the things, one of the tools that can help us to feel better when we're kind of in a funk is to become aware or conscious of when we are consuming or taking in content, Facebook, TikTok, whatever it is, lectures, education, and when we are taking that and turning it into something that we are creating and putting out into the world. That process of taking in ideas. You have to be a consumer and take in the pieces, all the parts that you're going to put together. Then what we do with the creative process, whatever type of creative process that you're doing, is we are very unique in that we can synthesize those things and come up with a new idea and then put it out into the world. In fact, one of the signs that I have up in my studio, we'll have to put a picture of it up there, it's right above the door. I can see it when I'm looking at the wall behind the camera. It's a quote from Jack Walsh that says, “the hero is the one with the ideas”. The ideas are the thing that AI can't do. AI, that everybody's so afraid of, AI can give us the pieces, but the piece that's missing that only we as humans can do is to take those pieces, get the new ideas, and then put them out. That is the creative process. Something happens inside our bodies when we start creating. Not only is it happening in our minds, but it's also just very, very good for our mood and our dopamine and serotonin. Plus, it allows us to interact with other people and to practice healthier behaviors. Some of you don't know the whole backstory of the show so I'll share a little bit with you. This show was in the making for a long time. I've had an idea, oh, wow. I had the idea of sharing the conversations from our private patient conversations in my office with a broader audience for at least 15 years. The how of making that turn into The Dr. Crockett Show has taken me an enormous amount of effort and time and evolution. This is a very, very long undertaking creative process to create the show. But one of the things that I realized is that through doing the show and taking the time every week or every other week over the last year because we're coming up on our one-year anniversary. Can you believe that? I can't believe that. It's amazing. I'm just going to segue for a minute. I'm going to scroll for a minute just off the side. Y'all, I am so very, very proud when I look back at this year of the content that we've created and the good work that we've put out. I hope you take a minute to go back through our podcasts and shows. It's just been an amazing thing that I've had the privilege of coming to you guys on a weekly basis and presenting great content to help you with your lives. I'm in awe and gratitude that I've even gotten to do this. It's incredible. I can't believe we're coming up on a year. So, one of the things I've realized is I'm not just doing it for the likes or putting the stuff out there. I'm certainly not doing it for fame. My view counts are not at that level yet. But what I realized is in doing the show, in every week or every other week having to do the creative process, what I've seen is it makes me healthier and happier. I'm eating healthy food behind the scenes. Before we come here. We always do a session in the kitchen where I cook mostly whole food plant-based. We talk about the show, and we create what we're going to put on the camera. That whole vortex, that whole creative process that we're going through, even before I come in front of the camera to you, has been exceedingly helpful in helping me heal from all of the things that I've been through in the last couple of years. If you want to see what those things are, just check back to last week or the week before when we did the talk on good grief. We've been through a lot of challenges. Through those challenges and through the growth process and largely through doing content creation and stepping up into the arena, as Brené Brown calls it with the famous quote, through doing that, it has been healing for me. I am becoming a different version of myself, and I am creating a lifestyle and giving back to this world in a way that only I can do. Guess what? You have something similar in you too. It may not look like this. It probably is not going to look like this, but each one of us was made with our unique skills and talents and gifts. I want to encourage you that you have that purpose. In looking for the ways that you create, big or small, little or in your family or on a broader scale. When you create and you give, then you are not only making yourself healthier, but you're extending love to the world around you too. I think that was the third seed, love. You can go back and read that, watch that show a couple of weeks ago. I did the third seed on love. Let's talk just briefly about some barriers. If creativity is so great, why don't we all do it all the time? Why are we such a consumerism culture? Why are we sitting there just consuming the content that's being put out by other people? Well, I think a lot of times people are addicted to the consumerism. I think we feel comfortable, and it's very comforting to flop down on the couch and be fed without having to think or do very much. We have very stressful lives. Our world is increasing in complexity. So, I think we literally become addicted to the consumerism. If we're not aware of how long we're spending on TikTok or Instagram, then it becomes very difficult for us to break that cycle. I want you to think about that in the coming week. I think sometimes people have a fear of looking small. When you start trying to create something, you're going from being not so good at something to becoming better at something. Those first steps where things aren't at the highest level, especially if you're at a high level in producing things around you in the rest of your life, when you start off riding the tricycle instead of the road bike, it can look a little bit awkward. I think people have a fear of what other people think when they see them stumbling and not doing something to the highest level that they're used to doing the other things in their life. But the only way you start to get better at the new thing is to start at the base level and have the persistence and perseverance to go through the steps and the evolution that it takes to become a pro at that and become a better creator in that thing. I think lots of times people have a fear of failure. I think a healthy way to look at failure would be to instead of looking at it as something that was wrong or something that went wrong, that if you can think in your mind step of failing forward faster to get to the end, what we're doing is actually doing a series of experiments of what works and what doesn't. We don't need to be afraid of what doesn't. It merely informs us about what to do right and what to take as the next step. You can try to make a light bulb 999 times and think that that's a big disaster until you hit the thousandth time and then you hit that light bulb like Edison did when he created the light bulb. I don't think 999 is really the number, but that's really not the point. He failed and failed and failed and failed until he created something incredible. So, set aside that fear of failure. Just think of it as your learning curve, what you're trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. I think lots of times a barrier to being creative is money. A lot of people think that they can't be creative unless they have a certain amount of money to use as a luxury on a hobby or something like that. That's certainly not true. You can sit down with a pen and paper and write or do all kinds of creative things that are not very expensive. Having that scarcity mindset is one of the things that keeps us from getting out there and showing ourselves and creating. So, you don't have to spend thousands of dollars on a YouTube channel and a studio. You can start creating content and putting out your thoughts right from your phone. Most of us have a phone. So, I would just encourage you to let go of that as a barrier and to consider putting out your value and what you need to share with the world. In closing, I'm going to leave you with a goal this week. I want you to actually be mindful. If you don't keep a diary this week, some of you might do that. At least bear in mind on a daily basis how much of your time you're spending consuming or learning or listening to content versus how much you are spending being a creative force in this world for a better place. Now go build something, create something, and share with me down below in the comments what you're working on. I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for joining me for this show. I'll see you next week on Tuesday. Thanks for joining The Dr. Crockett Show. Please remember to share, like, and subscribe, and I’ll see you next week. Have a great week creating. Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. To learn more, come visit us at DrCrockett.com, or find us on YouTube for the Dr. Crockett Show. If you found this episode helpful or think it might help someone else, please like, subscribe, and share. This is how we grow together. Thanks, and I'll see you next week. Love always, Sue.