This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:30] Laura Camien: Welcome to The Spark File, where we believe that everyone is creative, but smart creative people don't go it alone.

[0:43] Susan Blackwell: I'm Susan Blackwell.

[0:44] Laura Camien: And I'm Laura Camien.

[0:46] Susan Blackwell: And we are creativity coaches who help people clarify and accomplish their creative goals.

[0:51] Laura Camien: Know that just by listening to this podcast, you are joining a warm and wonderful clan of creatives.

[0:57] Susan Blackwell: But hold on a second, you might be asking yourself, what exactly is a Spark File?

[1:03] Laura Camien: A Spark File is a place where you consistently collect all of your inspirations and fascinations.

[1:09] Susan Blackwell: Every episode, we're going to reach into our very own Spark Files and exchange some sparks.

[1:15] Laura Camien: And from time to time, we're going to talk to some folks who spark us too.

[1:18] Susan Blackwell: And your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take some of those sparks of inspiration and make something of your own.

[1:25] Laura Camien: So without further ado, let's open up The Spark File.

[1:31] Susan Blackwell: Hi Laura Camien.

[1:32] Laura Camien: Oh, hi Suze.

[1:33] Susan Blackwell: How are you doing?

[1:35] Laura Camien: I'm really well. I know we're not supposed to talk about each other's appearances.

[1:39] Susan Blackwell: Tell me about my looks. How do I look?

[1:42] Laura Camien: You look great. Your hair looks great. Your style is stylish.

[1:46] Susan Blackwell: Thank you. I think you look great.

[1:48] Laura Camien: Thank you. I'm glad that this is not in Smell-O-Vision because I think it's probably best.

[1:53] Susan Blackwell: I think it's probably best that you're just looking at me and not smelling me right now.

[1:57] Laura Camien: Very honest. I'll tell you what I smell like right now. Not that you asked, but just in case you did, you know, I love fragrance and I especially love gourmand fragrance.

[2:06] Susan Blackwell: And today, I'm wearing a perfume that this fragrance, I think has, I've heard it described by a very discerning nose.

[2:18] Laura Camien: Smelling as if you opened up a fresh box of Cocoa Puffs and put your face down in the plastic bag and sniffed, so it smells a little like Cocoa Puffs and it smells a little like milk.

[2:35] Susan Blackwell: I put two fragrances together, so it smells like, I smell like a bowl of Cocoa Puffs.

[2:40] Laura Camien: I love it. This is delightful, Suze, and I think everybody listening should know something else about you.

[2:46] Susan Blackwell: So when it comes to scents, I really like to smell like gourmand, delicious, sweet food.

[2:54] Laura Camien: Delicious foods.

[2:55] Susan Blackwell: Yes, absolutely. It'll be like, today I'm lemon tart or today I'm vanilla something.

[3:02] Laura Camien: There's nothing like a great gourmand fragrance that has been developed by a really, really good perfumier.

[3:10] Susan Blackwell: Now, you're using the word gourmand a lot here. How exactly would you define gourmand?

[3:18] Laura Camien: I feel like I should do a spark on this. It's a descriptor for fragrances that smell like food.

[3:24] Susan Blackwell: I see. But it doesn't just have to be a bowl of Cocoa Puffs or a lemon tart.

[3:31] Laura Camien: Those are two of my very favorites. But it can also be, it smells like carrots or carrot seeds.

[3:40] Susan Blackwell: So it's all different types of food.

[3:44] Laura Camien: Food-related.

[3:45] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. And I love it.

[3:47] Laura Camien: I love it. You're so edible.

[3:50] Susan Blackwell: I think that's what I love about it. There's probably some feminist theory that really pooh-poohs this, but I like smelling like delicious, comforting scents.

[4:02] Laura Camien: I bet it goes back to way, way back and attracting our suitors in order to procreate, which is our job.

[4:17] Susan Blackwell: Exactly. Failing miserably.

[4:19] Laura Camien: Okay. But you smell so good doing it.

[4:24] Susan Blackwell: Thank you, Laura Camien. Before you spark me, Laura, I know that today is your day to spark me, but before you spark me, we've got some fun things coming up, don't we?

[4:34] Laura Camien: We do. We really do. Busy season. Fun season.

[4:37] Susan Blackwell: It is a busy season at The Spark File. We're going to be launching our Blaze program, which is really our foundational program that helps people identify, clarify their creative goals and create a roadmap to achieve them with our support and the support of a really warm and supportive community.

[5:00] Laura Camien: We love Blaze.

[5:01] Susan Blackwell: We love Blaze. And we're introducing something new this year, Super Blaze, because people have a tendency, they take Blaze and then they want to re-up and they want to take it again.

[5:12] Laura Camien: So we created Super Blaze. So it's automatically built to the program. If you want to go all in in 2026 and blaze it up, have real creative consistency and get a lot done around your creativity, Super Blaze.

[5:27] Susan Blackwell: You can find out all about it at TheSparkFile.com. Now then, Laura Camien, do you want to spark me?

[5:33] Laura Camien: I'm totally going to share a spark with you. I feel as though I've talked a little bit about this. This one isn't going to shock you. So that's my confession up top. I suppose if you listen to The Spark File, even on occasion, it's a good amount of this.

[5:49] Susan Blackwell: It's not going to surprise you about me, but we'll just get real today. We'll get real about a few things.

[5:55] Laura Camien: Recently I was at my favorite work from home cafe. This is me. I work from home, which is really at a cafe in New York City. I was trying to do my work, but I was distracted by a conversation that was happening like two tables over.

[6:11] Susan Blackwell: You were dipping in.

[6:15] Laura Camien: Susan, I dipped hard. I love to dip in. I dipped hard and I couldn't even, when I heard the things that I heard, then I was like, oh shit. I can't even get to my notebook fast enough to write this down.

[6:29] Susan Blackwell: I was at one point frantically taking notes.

[6:33] Laura Camien: Like every good writer should, by the way, zero shame. Listen in and take notes. But on this occasion, the reason I was taking notes is because the wisdom this guy was spitting was exactly what I needed to hear.

[6:45] Susan Blackwell: You know when you have that resonance and you're just like, I know this is for me. It's clear as a bell. It is a message from the universe. Pay attention.

[7:00] Laura Camien: Channeling through that dude.

[7:02] Susan Blackwell: Channeling through. It was like radio static because it was so interesting. There was a lot that he was saying that I was like, I think I'm getting it. It was a little like, you know, a little distant and hard to hear. And then certain sentences, boom, they just cut right through.

[7:16] Laura Camien: So these two people were talking about their workplace. And from what I could pick up about that, it sounded rough. It sounded chaotic and unkind, dysfunctional, and I don't know, hard, sounded really hard.

[7:34] Susan Blackwell: And then one of them took this long, really grounded breath and in the calmest voice said this with so much clarity. He said, you cannot walk into the asylum and allow it to make you believe you have gone mad. You must remember it is a window, not a mirror.

[8:03] Laura Camien: You are looking through a window, not a mirror. And I swear to God. We like, sir, sir, excuse me, sir, can I, do you mind if I pull up a chair, let me tell you a few things. I have a podcast. And I was like, oh my God, everything in me like just snapped to attention and just like snapped into alignment.

[8:25] Susan Blackwell: It's a window, not a mirror, meaning it isn't you. Don't let them convince you it's you. And here's the thing, and we're going to unpack this because I recognize, I think I'll talk about this later too, but I recognize sometimes when I bring this up, there are people like, I don't know, that's really different from what I have been taught to believe, which is that everything is a mirror.

[8:54] Laura Camien: So we're going to unpack that today. Okay. Like you spot it, you got it. Kind of.

[8:59] Susan Blackwell: Oh, we're going to get so into that.

[9:01] Laura Camien: So the thing, the message here that like, you can simply be an observer of other people's shit and you don't need to engage and you don't actually need to think that it has anything to do with you. It honestly felt like someone was handing me a permission slip that I had never ever been offered before in my lifetime.

[9:22] Susan Blackwell: This was not okay. And the thing is, I think the reason it feels so revolutionary to me is because for most of my life, and I know this is true for a lot of people that I know. So I don't feel like I'm singular in this way, but for most of my life, if there was any whiff of pain, any conflict, any chaos, cruelty, discomfort, I assumed it had to be something that I caused or something that I needed to fix or something that I needed to heal in myself.

[10:01] Laura Camien: So the idea of like, this is theirs, not mine. I didn't even know that was an option on the menu. When that man said, it's a window, not a mirror, it hit me so deeply because it went against every single thing I had been taught about self-reflection, right?

[10:23] Susan Blackwell: I had believed truly, if I saw it, if I felt it, if it was in my field of vision, then it must somehow be about me.

[10:33] Laura Camien: A lot of that belief came from my early life, like always been a huge proponent of self-reflection long before I even understood what healthy reflection actually was.

[10:45] Susan Blackwell: Can I jump in and say, do you also think it may have come from even before you learned any of those lessons? When you're a little, little kid and say your parents get divorced or your grandma dies, you can sometimes when you're a little, little kid think, I caused this, something that I did caused this because you haven't yet developed your brain in a way that, you know, individuates you.

[11:17] Laura Camien: 100%.

[11:19] Susan Blackwell: And I think that children of narcissists or children of parents with borderline personality, they never do form that. There never is that moment because, you know, you're trying to decode your family chaos and your only available understanding is, well, if I had behaved differently, this wouldn't have happened.

[11:43] Laura Camien: Say, no, sweetie, it wasn't you. This wasn't your fault. It actually is. It is the opposite.

[11:50] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. I think another piece of this is if you feel like you caused it, you can also feel like you could maybe control it. And so often, you can't. You can't. You can't. But because of this sort of malignant relationship with self-reflection, I know I have done this and I suspect, Suze, sometimes that you may too, but you get all the votes on that. I built a giant running list of all the things in me and outside of me that I needed to fix. I have to fix this about myself. I have to fix the way I do this. I have to fix this. I have to fix that. These things I didn't even, you know, I didn't do them. I must still figure out how to fix them. And every time I fixed one, another flaw sort of popped up, like a little emotional whack-a-mole.

It was never ending. But it wasn't just family life. I was thinking about this because I was like, huh, was it just the family dynamic? I don't think so. I, again, and I don't think I'm alone in this. I think I got a double whammy from church. So apologies to the religious among us. I know we don't always have the same experiences, but because I was taught that you have to be really careful about how you pray, specifically the words that you choose when you pray, I had the added bonus of thinking that like even the weather or natural disasters were my fault because I had somehow asked for something like in the wrong way and this is what I caused. Pastor Steve told us that God will give you exactly what you ask for.

He will answer every prayer, but you have to be careful about the way you ask it. So for example, you might say, God, I wish I didn't have to go to school tomorrow. Well, according to Pastor Steve, God might answer you by giving you a terrible disease or having you run over by a car, landing you in the hospital and thus not at school. That was a real example, Suze. So you might wish to not go to school and the bus might hit you. You land in the hospital and guess what? Prayer answered. You're not at school, are you? It was terrible. It reminds me of a joke in altar boys where they say like, like pray for it, but just be very specific. Very specific. I mean, this is the thing. I just feel like they kind of made God sound like a real dick.

Like how can God hear your prayer, understand your intention and then deliver a real punch in the gut like that? But this voice of authority, this Pastor Steve who is touched by the hand of God. Clearly. But in our tiny brains, like this is a real authority figure.

[14:46] Laura Camien: Yes.

[14:47] Susan Blackwell: Who is anointed by God. And so that's the story that is getting into your little formative brain. This resulted in me believing that like if it rained on the day that we were supposed to go to worlds of fun, which it did, I must have prayed wrong. I must have prayed wrong. And that just added to the list of things I needed to fix. So I want to say clearly, I do believe in accountability. Very much so. I want to keep my side of the street clean. I want to own my part in conflict or issues. I want to learn everything. I'm constantly like, what am I supposed to learn from this? What am I supposed to do with this? This must be something. But the problem was I was owning every part of everything, including the things that belong to other people.

[15:42] Laura Camien: That's exhausting.

[15:43] Susan Blackwell: Even my therapist years ago said to me, you know, you don't have to carry that pain anymore. It isn't yours. She literally said, it isn't yours. And I was like, what do you mean? How do you not carry it? How do you put it down? If you can see it, if you can feel it, if you can empathize with it, doesn't that mean that it's mine? And she was very clear. Just because you see it doesn't mean it belongs to you. And in this case, she was talking about my mom. My mom had had a very hard life. Like she had had several relationships with men that really hurt her deeply. So she had a belief system built from those experiences. She had gotten cancer for the first time at age 37 and she continued to have it off and on.

She had a lot of pain. She came by it naturally. But my therapist called me out saying I was carrying around my mom's pain, maybe in an empathetic way, the highly sensitive person way. But she was like, do you think that you're responsible for the way your mom's life has turned out? She said it was like I was wearing a heavy coat made of someone else's pain and I could just take it off. It was so simple and it was so absolutely foreign to me.

[17:12] Laura Camien: And the thing is, there is a whole cultural, psychological, spiritual lineage that reinforces this idea that everything is a mirror. It is a very popular belief in our culture.

[17:26] Susan Blackwell: So, you know, I had to do a little dive into this and how this idea became so prevalent. Yes, there's some like ancient religious and philosophical traditions that you can point to, but the modern version, the one that so many of us absorbed, it turns out it comes straight from the New Age movement of the 1980s and the 1990s. We're not talking ancient wisdom.

[17:56] Laura Camien: We were soaking in it.

[17:57] Susan Blackwell: We were soaking in it. But now it's become fair game for, you know, therapy quips on Instagram. And it's way more nuanced than this, but I'm just going to share a quick top line of the top line. So super, super fast. But basically we start with Freud in the late 1800s who described projection, the idea that we unconsciously attribute our own unacceptable emotions, impulses, or traits to somebody else. For example, instead of I'm angry, you project like you are being hostile. Okay. That's a very Freud thing. It is a mirror, but it's a very specific and narrow one. Freud never said everything is a mirror, only that some of our reactions are. Then we move on to Carl Jung, early 1900s. This is the origin point that most modern thinkers latch on to.

Jung thought that when we have qualities that we can't accept in ourselves, we unconsciously project them outward onto other people, very similar to Freud. He famously said, everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. This laid the foundation for the idea that other people are mirrors because our reaction to them reveals our unconscious. But again, and this is important, Jung never said everything is a mirror, just that our intense or repetitive reactions often are a mirror. He believed in discernment, and remember that word because that's what it's all about, discernment, not just a blanket self-blame.

[19:52] Laura Camien: Then we hit the human potential movement in the 1960s, the 70s, which loved the idea that your experience of others is a reflection of your internal world. This bled into the broader cultural idea that all conflict is self-generated. This is interesting because there is a positive side to that belief system that your triggers reveal your areas for growth. But the harmful side is that it doesn't take into account victims of abuse, trauma, or oppression, and how often they were told based on this belief that you attracted this, you created this, this is your mirror. That's a little bit tough.

[20:40] Susan Blackwell: Then we move into the new age movement, the 1970s to the 90s. This is when the concept got overly simplified, like way oversimplified. This is where I can trace my personal roots to it because it was thinkers like Louise Hay, who I read religiously. When my mom got cancer, I read every single Louise Hay book. I listened to Louise Hay tapes, cassette tapes of her books and her reading them. But also Shakti Gawan, the broader new thought, new age community took Young's nuanced concept and turned it into this seemingly universal law that we now all subscribe to, which is what you see in others is what you need to heal in yourself, aka you spot it, you got it. That's it right there.

[21:35] Laura Camien: Now, modern pop psychology and the wellness culture, which is all Instagram made bite-sized Jungian ideas go viral. These self-help accounts turn complex psychological theories into slogans like your triggers are your teachers. If it irritates you, it's about you. Fix yourself and your world will change and everything is a mirror. Again, they do contain truth, but they often lack the nuance, the nuance of trauma, the nuance of power dynamics, abusive systems, other people's behaviors, and actual reality testing, which is why a counter movement began, which I would say it's small and it's quiet. Let's get loud people. People saying, actually, sometimes it's not a mirror. Sometimes it's a boundary.

Sometimes it's projection, but there's not yours. Think about that for a second, because if we're busy focusing on like, is this my projection, but we're leaving out the possibility that what is happening in this moment is them projecting their stuff. And also just not everything is your lesson. The nuance truth is that not everything is a mirror. Some things definitely are, but discernment, knowing when you're seeing yourself versus seeing someone else's stuff is the actual psychological skill that we need to build. Not a blanket, everything is about me and this must be something I've done or something I need to fix.

[24:58] Laura Camien: And that is what made the cafe moment hit so hard. Because there are times in relationships and workplaces when the truth is, this is not a mirror. It is a window. This belongs to someone else. And the spiritual lesson is not fix yourself, but walk away. You can walk away.

[25:24] So how do we tell the difference between a mirror and a window? This is where the research comes in. These are helpful tools to distinguish projection from perception. Signs that it is a mirror, like stuff for you to look at. You're having a disproportionate emotional reaction. This is a recurring pattern in multiple relationships in multiple places in your life at the same time. The feeling is old, familiar, like an emotional echo. You're having black and white thinking like always and never. They always do this and they never do that. And you're having extreme defensiveness about feedback.

[26:12] Now, conversely, it may be a window. If neutral people outside of this experience validate your perspective, they can see it too. They can see what you are saying. It might be a window. The other person reacts with outsized defensiveness. This conflict only exists with this person or this situation or the feeling is unfamiliar, like not connected to old wounds. This is not about avoiding self-reflection. It's just about accurate and appropriate self-reflection. That's what I'm finally gratefully learning. It's not a mirror. Sometimes it's a window and looking through a window doesn't mean that you're avoiding responsibility. It means you're practicing discernment. It means that you're respecting the boundaries of your own spirit.

It means that you're honoring what is yours and what is not yours. Knowing the difference between a window and a mirror is wisdom. There is a freedom on the other side of that that feels so liberating, like taking off a heavy coat you didn't even realize you were wearing.

[27:42] But the wisest people, I've seen these people and I know some of these people and have been amazed because I'll be like, wow, they're not getting all mixed up in this drama at all. The wisest people are the ones whose lives feel both grounded and expansive and they know how to flow between with discernment. This is something I need to self-reflect on. This is something I have a lesson to learn from and this isn't mine. We can hold ourselves accountable and not volunteer to carry every single burden in the room. That is the work, that is the freedom and that is a spark.

[28:28] Susan Blackwell: Laura, thank you for that spark. I'm thinking about, of course, like holding it up and trying it on against different scenarios in my own life. But a big part of that is collaboration. I'm thinking about creative collaborations that I've been a part of where this comes up, where it's sort of like, is this a window? Is it a mirror? You know, what are the various contributions of the different parties in this situation? And so I'm thinking how useful it is to think about, and I'm also thinking about like when the heat is really on in collaborative conflict, how incendiary it might be to be like, you know, I've really given this some discernment and some real investigation and I'm pretty sure that—

[29:24] This isn't mine.

[29:25] Laura Camien: It's you, baby.

[29:26] Susan Blackwell: This isn't mine.

[29:27] Laura Camien: No. Well, I wonder though, I mean, I get like the specific circumstances of collaboration, but sometimes it's not even our job to tell that person or those people that this is their stuff. Sometimes the lesson is walk away, right? And when I was looking at the list of things, like does this feel familiar and old or, and I was like, oh, maybe it is a mirror because there's part of this situation that I was experiencing recently that I'm like, I've been here before.

[29:59] Yeah.

[30:00] Susan Blackwell: And so, again, it's not all or nothing. I think there was a lesson for me in it. And the lesson is, what have you not tried? You have tried in these circumstances in the past to fix everybody, fix the whole thing, and that hasn't worked. What you've not tried is simply walking away and saying, I hear you guys. I don't think, you know, this isn't for me.

[30:25] Yeah.

[30:25] Susan Blackwell: And, you know, and I'm out. And protecting myself and my peace and my sanity was just never something, again, it just wasn't something I thought I was allowed to do. But I'm in a very different place now. And I'm like, oh, I'm not only allowed to do it, I am obligated to do it. It is necessary to do it. And it's kind of exciting for the first time to try it out. But I do think, Susan, like, to your point, when we are in close relationship with people, again, like, you've always been great about this. And it's one of the things I appreciate most about our partnership is that we identified our ways of being on the front end, like identify our ways of cleaning up before we actually do it. And we're not just doing it of cleaning up before problems, you know, get too big.

[31:25] And if you don't have that with a group of people or a collaborator, it's can easily like become an enormous mountain of a problem, you know, that needs resolving, that's going to be pretty intense. Because it has built its way there. And I think that when you're in a relationship with somebody who has you have an agreement with of like, we're going to work through this stuff. I don't think you end up at the place where it is really clearly like, this is all you.

[32:03] Yeah.

[32:04] Susan Blackwell: And not me. I think it can be like, I, you know, I hear what you're saying, and I will work on this part of it. I still think there's something in it for you to think about in this and both and both of those things can be okay. I think when you're in partnership, in a healthy partnership, you don't even get to that point where it's just like, just walk away. You know what I mean?

[32:22] Yeah.

[32:30] Laura Camien: It also reminds me of there's a song, a video by the Lonely Island, that comedy group with Andy Samberg, called Cool Guys Don't Look at Explosions. And it's all about that trope in movies where you turn and walk away as the bridge is blowing up behind you. And it reminds me a little bit of that. It's, it's, yeah, it's a little bit of cool guys don't look at explosions. And so it's a window, not a mirror. Now turn around and just keep walking and don't look back. Boogie on out of there.

[33:02] Susan Blackwell: Holy shit. That is so good. And I will be looking up that video as soon as we get off this recording. Thank you for that spark Laura Camien. That was beautiful. This episode of the Spark File was made on the lands of the Lenape and the Mohican people. And as always, we hope it put another bunch of sparks in your file.

[33:20] Hey, listen, if there's a spark that you would like us to explore, seriously, do you have sparks for us? We are, we're on the hunt. Send them in. Or if you'd like to learn more about how to coach with us to accomplish your creative goals, you can reach us at getcreative@thesparkfile.com or you can reach us through our website, thesparkfile.com. We will even happily take your feedback if you have some, but you know, there's a price of admission, a small, small cost. First, you have to share a creative risk that you have taken recently. You can follow us on social at thesparkfile and be sure to subscribe rate and five-star review this podcast. It is the thing that you can do that helps other people to find us. Also, if you like this podcast, we hope that you'll share it with people that you love. And if you didn't like it, self-reflect, is it a mirror? Is it a window? Ask yourself.

[34:19] Self-reflect friends. If something lights you up and gets your creative sparks flying, we are writing you a forever permission slip to make that thing that's been knocking at your door. It's your turn to take that spark and fan it into a flame. You know, you've got to take it and make it something that inspires me. I dump it in my spark.

[34:47] I could be something that I want to make or how I want to be. I'll pump it in my spark.

[34:58] I jump into my spark. Let's open up the spark.