33 - Jill Girling - TV Writer, Producer, Show Runner. 'Stop Letting Fear Steal Your Creative Dreams'

TV Writer, Producer, Assistant Director and Show-Runner Jill Girling known for Cube (1997), Ride (2016),  Queer as Folk (1999), Find Me in Paris and Spellbound joins us today for a very special heart to heart about how paralyzing the fear can be when we first come into contact with our creative gifts, how it can derail our loves and what we can do to find our way back to ourselves. 

Jill is someone who (like many people who have a deep current of creativity running through them) experienced a lot of fear when she first came into contact with her creative gifts.

At the beginning of this episode Jill muses about what happened after she first decided she wanted to be a storyteller and writer - how she went veering almost cataclysmically from her path, getting lost in crime and partying and eventually in bringing other peoples creative dreams to life through her work as an Assistant Director in Hollywood.

Over the course of this organic, curious and open hearted conversation, we discover together how fear can keep us from our creative dreams, causing us so much heartache. Together we are able to name and identify the mechanism that led Jill to veer off her path, what brought her back to it and the realization that maybe she was never really lost at all.

When we start to see how these fear mechanisms work, how we're keeping ourselves from our dreams, it's like the portal to not doing that anymore. 

How often have we found ourselves facilitating someone else dream not our own?  How often have we done this? Are we doing it right now? 

What if you follow your creative dreams? What is the worst that will happen? You’re not going to die because you have a creative failure. You’re just going to learn from it.

It is a powerful conversation, one that many of us can find ourselves in, and I can't wait for you to hear it.

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT 

-How Creativity plays the long game with us, taking us on adventures that only make sense looking back at them

-How fear of how bright the creativity inside her was stopped her from following her own creative dreams and ultimately led to a life of depression and alcoholism, and how she stopped that cycle and started to live the life of her dreams

-How she healed her workaholism for once and for all 

-The one drastic thing she did that has done more for her creativity than anything else she has ever done

-How she realized she couldn't juggle working, drinking AND writing. Wanted to give it a real shot - said to herself, lets see what happens if i quit drinking

-The simple thing she does to get through times when she is overwhelmed with work - the little reward system that keeps everything functioning. 

RESOURCES USED IN THIS EPISODE

Spellbound

Find me in Paris (HULU)

Great Gatsby

Legends of the Fall 

Brad Pitt

Jackie Chan 

Rumble in the Bronx

Adhd

JJ abrams 

HBO

Hallmark Movies

Ride (Nickelodeon)

Paris Opera Ballet School 

Gilmour Girls

Vancouver Film School