Finding Your Voice: Five Stages of Creativity
===
Introduction
---
[00:00:00]
Closing
---
Erica Jago: *The work of finding your voice is the work of moving through these five *stages
of creativity.
inertia, *,* *imitation, intuition, imagination, and inspired work. *~*quick.*~* It's not quic*k or easy *, but it's absolutely necessary because the world doesn't need another copy of someone else. The world needs what you have to say, your principles, your insights, your life lessons.* welcome back. Today I wanna talk about something that every single person building something has done and something that simultaneously makes you feel like the biggest frt on the planet. What I'm talking about is copying. H ow many of us are imitating, ~like~ honestly imitating someone?
If you're on Instagram, I'm guessing it's a yes because you're building a business, you're trying to teach something. Most likely you're copying someone there. Maybe it's unconscious. Maybe you're doing it on purpose, but you're studying someone that you admire and you're taking their structure, their energy, how they do things, and you're emulating them as your own.[00:01:00]
What happens is that maybe you feel like an imposter. I hear this word a lot. You're thinking, oh my God, I'm a fraud. Everybody's gonna find out that I'm not original. Everyone's going to realize that I'm just doing something that isn't necessarily mine, but someone else's. ~this is what I wanna talk about today, is that~ copying isn't what's making you feel like a fraud.
Copying is actually necessary. It's one of those stages that you have to move through. So the problem isn't copying. The problem is you don't know copying is supposed to happen, and I wanna walk you through the five stages of finding your voice.
I'm gonna show you how I live them, how I moved through them. Because once you really understand that copying is not the enemy, hiding is the enemy, ~when~ everything's going to start to feel more free, more uniquely yours. And let's start with where I first saw this concept being taught. Gabrielle Roth, she was a genius movement teacher.
I found her while I was living in San [00:02:00] Francisco. She touches a lot about ecstatic dance, but she has ~that she calls~ the five stages of embodying spirit. I,~ to me, ~call them the five stages of finding my voice because that's when I really started to understand that this is a normal part of the creative process ~you're building something.~
Whether it's a yoga class, a coaching business, a podcast, any sort of product, you move through these stages and most people quit at stage two. That's the problem, ~not,~ not the stage itself, but quitting. ~let's~ break this down.
Stage 1: Inertia
---
Erica Jago: The very first stage that most people are in is the inertia stage. They're frozen, they're scared, they wanna create something, they wanna teach something, they wanna build something, but they don't know.
How ~they just~ can't seem to move and that starts to weigh on them. There's a lot of people in inertia who their whole lives, they never give themselves permission to move forward, and so therefore they're stuck and then all of a sudden in their stuckness, they find [00:03:00] someone they admire and they begin ~to~ stage two.
~and someone~ So
Stage 2: Imitation
---
Erica Jago: meone who's work is working, someone whose clients or students or followers seem really engaged and you think to yourself, well, if it's working for her, maybe it can work for me, or, it's really speaking to me, so I'm going to study it, copy their structure, copy their energy, and copy how they teach so that I can have the same success that they're having.
What's happening in stage two is that's really the moment when you start to feel like a fraud. You start to feel like an imposter because you know you're hiding inside of their framework. You know, you're not being fully honest and that hiding starts to eat at you. And this is the thing that most people don't really.
Grasp or understand is that stage two is not the problem. It is absolutely necessary. You have to study, you have to learn, you have to see how it's done. You have to see how it feels stepping into that, trying on that coat of the person's success. [00:04:00] And the problem comes when you never really push yourself Beyond that, you stay in that imitation mode and you never ask yourself.
Okay, well. What is my unique approach? What, ~what~ would I do differently? When you do that enough, you start to feel this way of thinking and it starts to feel limited in that way. And so
Stage 3: Intuition
---
Erica Jago: that's when stage three starts to come in, and that's the intuition because you are hearing sort of this internal voice that says.
You know, underneath the imitation, you feel where you're different. ~notice~ what doesn't sit right with you anymore. ~start~ to ask yourself, what would I do differently? ~you start~ to feel a alive, and there's something inside of you that's moving beyond their rationale, but has meaning or deeper explanation that you wanna start to discuss and explore.
So you can start to see how that imitation led you into recognizing in your body what is theirs and what is [00:05:00] yours. And once you start to listen to that voice inside of you that's saying, do this, say this, try this. ~into~
Stage 4: Imagination
---
Erica Jago: that fourth stage, which is. Imagination. Imagination is what really takes everything that you've learned.
And you start to experiment. You start to reinvent based on what you know to be true about yourself, about your people, because you are out there ~their talk, ~still doing the work, you're still showing up, you still have a presence and you are engaging with people. But even if you have that short-lived success.
Your imagination says, well, there might be more. And when you get ~that~ place where you're starting to come up with these ~own~ creative ideas, you're no longer them, but you're starting to create this sense of self, that's yours. Then stage five comes in because from the imagination comes the inspiration . ~Inspiration.~
Stage 5: Inspiration
---
Erica Jago: So spontaneity kicks [00:06:00] in, ~kicks, kicks in~ the work That only
Stage 5: Inspiration
---
Erica Jago: comes after you've done all that discipline work. It's the work that really feels like it's flowing through you. ~coming~ from you. It's really starting to be that original voice, and most of us feel like frauds in stage two and quit.
But if you keep on asking yourself, well, what is it that I want to say? What is it that wants to come out of me intuitively, imaginatively inspired? That's when you start to go past the places where most people quit say, I'm a fraud, I'm an imposter. And go even one step further.
My Story: Burning for a Breakthrough
---
Erica Jago: So let me tell you my humiliating story.
I need to be really honest because ~it's, I can tell~ when I was writing the script for this podcast, I was like, oh, this is kind of embarrassing. But the thing that really got me to where I am today is being able to. Recognize that I'm not a failure, I'm not a fraud from that moment, but I really do have an imagination of my [00:07:00] own.
I have a voice of my own. And I was inspired every day by listening to that voice inside. So years ago when I was working with a therapist in San Francisco, I was seeing her every week, going to Cow Hollow, and she had this concept that she was working with. She called it Burning for a Breakthrough.
~was~ brilliant. Because I saw all these ways that burning for a breakthrough had meaning for me. And it was about that moment where you have to burn through something in order to move forward. And it, for me, it was powerful and it, it changed me and I decided to teach it.
Actually, ~I~ I wrote about it in a newsletter. Well, she got that newsletter and immediately called me up and said, this is mine. You can't do that. ~True ~and as embarrassed as I was. I realized I wasn't studying it. I was trying to make it my own, ~as~ I was taking that concept and ~as~ I was teaching it as my own, and I was ~integrated~ it into my classes, I was teaching core work and using that concept of burning through a breakthrough for core work in my yoga classes.[00:08:00]
more that I talked about it, the more I started to feel like, oh, this is mine, but it's not mine. I got caught ~in that~ someone called me out. And in that moment, I felt like the smallest version of myself. I felt like the fraud. I felt like everything I had built was a lie. It was humiliating. It was one of the lowest moments I had in my entrepreneurship.
But in that moment, that moment saved me because I started to be imaginative ~about,~ I started to realize something incredibly crucial is that. I can't Hide behind her forever. And if I kept hiding and if I kept stealing concepts and I kept teaching them as my own, it was going to destroy me from the inside.
because someone was going to find me out ~like~ that was the blessing. ~even though~ it felt painful in the moment, ~but~ because I would know. And that knowing would start to eat at everything that I did, every decision that I made, it would stop me from studying. It would stop me from learning from people that I admire,
Art of Attention
---
Erica Jago: And I started to study with intention. So to begin to move from that imitation [00:09:00] stage into the intuitive stage, into the imaginative stage. This is really where Art of Attention comes in my first book, because after that humiliation, I got really intentional about studying. ~to~ yoga classes three days a week.
I sat there, I watched them. I paid attention. I came home. I documented and sketched everything that I could personally remember. I started to study patterns. I started to notice what was working and what didn't work, and I noticed where teachers had energy, where they lost energy. I noticed the structures of how they taught.
I noticed the music, I noticed the timing, and it became ~of like,~ oh, I'm not just copying, but I was asking myself deeper questions like, ~is it~ about how they structure a class that keeps people engaged? What is it about their energy that is drawing me in? What's missing that I know I could personally come in and add that would be different than what they're teaching?
And even feeling that aliveness in me when I imagined teaching that differently, [00:10:00] that got me excited. And that's where I started to really ask myself questions. And as I asked those questions and listened to how I responded, there she was. That was my voice. That was the, voice underneath all of the imitation.
There's too many I words in this, framework, but it's about noticing that I didn't teach like the other teachers I was studying. I noticed that I had something different, that I approached it differently, that I saw things differently, and that's where that stage three, that intuition really started to come through, through that process of deliberate.
Imitation. Studying, learning, sketching, asking questions. ~to~ see my own creative process emerge, and that creative process became a method. And that method founded my first book, Art of Attention. ~started~ to understand how I [00:11:00] learned, how I worked, how I taught, and what made sense to me and what ~fell~ aligned, and ~when~ that method became my first book, ~art of Attention.~
Art of Attention wasn't me trying to be someone else. It was me studying the people that I admired, ~from them,~ asking what felt true to me, and then creating something that was entirely different I have heard so many times . This book Was groundbreaking. ~was~ a pioneering book ~really ~The design and layout brought forth this whole new way of laying out books.
Now to say that imitation is the only thing that brought me there, if you look back at my career in an engineering firm, ~like~ I was doing 200 page proposals every single month, so a book machine, right? You merge that with my studying and seeing the patterns. All of those stages really came together.
The imitation, the intuition, and the imagination to create that inspired work. Once Art of Attention was out, I didn't stop. I kept moving. I kept creating. I kept listening to [00:12:00] that intuition, and then Angelus came. ~book~ was different because this was me taking everything that I had learned about attention, about teaching, about sequence design, and created something completely and totally new.
~was~ something that was grounded. In what I had studied and what I had learned, but it was entirely my own voice. Angelus was stage four and stage five. That was starting to happen, but at the next level of that, I was imagining I was starting to feel that inspiration. The thing that worked the most was that it felt like it was really flowing through me, and I talked about this alot
in the making Of my second book Angelus, it felt like a divine gift. So what I really want you to understand is that I didn't just jump from art of attention to Angelus overnight. There was years of work in between that years of teaching, years of studying, years of listening, and you can't skip those [00:13:00] stages.
from inertia to inspiration. You have to move through imitation. You have to move through intuition. You have to move through imagination. And I thank Gabrielle Roth for teaching me that because now. When I think about what brought me to Tabernacle, the Creative Residency that I lead, by the time I created Tabernacle, I had really moved through these stages so many times that I understood them in my bones.
I had lived them, I had felt the humiliation. Of stage two, felt the confusion of stage three. I had felt the experiment, and excitement of stage four, then feeling that spontaneity, that creative spontaneity of stage five. It's like. Wow. ~wasn't~ wrong when she said, this is really how you find your voice.
This is how you embody that spirit when you realize that everybody who wants to build a business, everybody who wants to [00:14:00] teach something, everybody who wants to create, they move through these stages. They have to, and most of them feel like frauds and they quit.
Tabernacle: Finding Your Voice
---
Erica Jago: I created Tabernacle to really help people move through those stages with intention.
In week three of Tabernacle, we do something called saturation and seduction. This is a very deliberate stage to work. We have people, study teachers and offerings and people who excite them. I even ask them to present to me everything that they love, everything that turns them on so that I can see what they like and what they want to.
Imitate, but we have to study them with awareness. And so if you have your journal and you want to write these questions down, this is what I ask my Tabernacle ~Tabernacle is~ what is it about the structure that ~that~ they're offering that you love? break it down in a way that is a wire frame? I don't care about what they're teaching, but what is the structure that they're teaching that turns you on?
Second question, [00:15:00] what about their energy is really drawing you in? Is it the way that they talk? Is it their mannerisms? Is it the tone of their voice? Is it their style? Is it the way that they're projecting? There's so many different ways of understanding the way someone's energy draws you in. What are you attracted to about them?
Can you name it? 'cause that's going to give us something to compare when I see you talking or ~about~ when I see your energy. Can we, can we up level here? Can we adjust here? ~of that~ gives us clues into what's missing that you could add. When you start to feel alive in you, when you start to imagine doing things differently, that becomes a skillset that you and I start to develop together.
Now the last question is really where a lot of the nitty gritty magic starts to happen because it's when people start to move from that blind imitation to intuition, they start to hear their own voice, and from [00:16:00] there we help them move into ~the~ stage three and stage four, and then eventually ~the~ stage five, right?
That inspired work where you can go out on Instagram and present your offering to the world and feel really good like it's red carpet. Ready? ~I want you to understand is that.~ Yes, the journey is super long, but the journey is so absolutely necessary.* You cannot build a real business on someone else's foundation, not because it's wrong to study them, not because it's an embarrassing, humiliating thing to copy, because the hiding will destroy you from the inside.*
I can't tell you how many people will come to me in the Tabernacle, me included, will say, oh, ~doing~ exactly what I did. I can see it. I can see where they copied me. I can see where they've taken verbatim, what I've posted and used it as their own
One of the things that we rebuttal that ~is we say to themselves,~ well, they might have that one post, but they don't have the whole wealth of knowledge that I have to offer. They don't have all of the discipline that I've been putting in place over the [00:17:00] years to come to that conclusion and to come to those basic principles and those key insights into my work.
They might have that Instagram post, but they don't have all that embodied wisdom and knowledge, that's why. We have to just let it go, block them and move on because the hiding is going to destroy you from the inside out. ~you~ hide inside of someone else's framework, when you catch someone hiding inside of your framework, or even when you're doing it yourself, you're really fracturing your confidence.
They may be copying you, but they don't have the confidence you have. They don't have the inner knowing that it really did come from them. And when you're managing who you're projecting and who you really are, ~split.~ time and energy it takes into managing those two versions of ~yourself.~ That's what eats you alive.
But you study with intention, when you ask yourself what feels alive in you, and when you start to listen to your own voice, the authenticity is so [00:18:00] profound that there is a certain conviction in your being. That's what sells. That's what creates trust and credibility to all of your audiences.
~What I've observed is that the Tabernacle who move the fastest in Tabernacle are the ones who stop, who stop and apologize for being the invitation stage, and they start studying with intention, right? They're, they're not pretending.~
~ Tabernacle~ who I found move the fastest in Tabernacle are the ones who stop apologizing for being in that imitation stage. And they start studying with intention. They're not pretending. They're learning and people can feel the difference when you're hiding.
People feel the inauthenticity but when you're studying with intention, when you're listening for your voice, when you're starting to imagine what you would do differently, people feel and see that that's where the creativity really feels the most potent. And they feel that conviction.
They feel the presence, and that's what makes them say yes to you. Versus someone who's borrowing every single piece of content that they're sharing. One more thing that I wanna say. That person I borrowed the concept from the one who called me out. She became one of my biggest [00:19:00] supporters ~me~ move from imitation into inspiration.
She saw me get humiliated and then get honest. She saw me stop hiding and start learning. And she really understood that because what does a real mentorship really look like? Not here's my way, but here's how to find your way. She didn't destroy me for copying. She just called me out so that I would wake up and I did wake up, right?
I went deeper into that. ~It like,~ why do I feel like I don't have anything to say? Why do I feel like I need to copy? Why don't I believe in myself? So here's what I'm saying. If you're in stage two right now ~of~ where you're fully imitating and copying other people and not really talking about ~you~ wanna say, you're copying someone that you admire, if you're studying them and feeling like a fraud, just listen.
Apologizing for being in stage two is not where you wanna be. You wanna say to yourself, I'm [00:20:00] learning. is necessary. question is, are you studying blindly or are you studying with intention? looking for the patterns? Are you asking yourself, what is it about them that I love and what's my version of that ~emulation of?~
~you're~ hiding in someone else's framework or ~you're~ asking yourself what feels alive ~of ~, those are the questions you wanna be asking because the last question, what feels alive in me when I imagine doing this differently? not your imposter syndrome, that's your intuition telling you it's time to move into stage three.
It's time to get intuitive about your voice, waking it up, listening to it, and that's really what the Residency does inside of Tabernacle.
Closing
---
Erica Jago: *The work of finding your voice is the work of moving through these five* stages of creativity: *imitation, intuition, imagination, and inspired work. *~*quick.*~* It's not easy, but* *it's absolutely necessary because the world doesn't need *[00:21:00] *another copy of someone else. The world needs what you have to say, your principles, your insights, your life lessons.*
people aren't waiting for a version of someone else. They're waiting for you. They're waiting for that thing that only you can bring. They're waiting for that voice that wakes up when you stop hiding and you start listening to yourself and being able to take that inner means and make it an outer expression.
and Keep studying, paying attention, and start listening for what, wants to come through for you, what wants to be said, because that's really the work, the nuances, the delivery, the expression of that. That's what's going to keep your imagination, keep your creations, and keep you moving forward inspired.
~ready~ to move through these stages with intention, if you're ready to stop hiding and start finding your voice. ~really~ was built for you. We open enrollment three times a year, so ~you~ just ~wanna~ hit reply, say, Hey, I'm ready to find my voice. I'm ready to work with a [00:22:00] group of people and with a designer to really mirror back to me how I can be more original, more expressive, and more true to me.
Thank you for listening
