Finding Focus in a Distracted World: Tips from Esmeralda Morales

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode number 246. Today I welcome Esmeralda Morales to the show. She is an awesome tiktoker, a great creative storyteller, and she's a writer with over 9 years of experience in film and television. She's currently working on a young adult novel while trying to lead a more intentional and low tech lifestyle with journaling as the center of it all. She, she and I connected over on the TikTok platform through our shared enthusiasm for journaling and the power of putting pen to paper and just figuring out what we're doing, what we're wanting from life, and also figuring out how to really dig deeper into the powers that we have, including our creativity. She has so many wonderful ideas and practices and, and routines that she's going to share with us in this episode and I can't wait for you to meet her. Let's go listen to the episode together now.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:10]:
Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped thousands of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time for Success podcast. Hello, everyone. I have a really fun, very new friend of mine on the show today and her name is Esmeralda Morales, and really we met on TikTok of all places.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:07]:
I don't think she's my first TikTok friend or friend who came on to the podcast from TikTok, but I think she might be number two. So, Esmeralda, thank you for being here and thank you for taking up this funny woman's offer to come onto the show.

Esmeralda Morales [00:02:24]:
Yeah, thank you for having me. I was really excited about it and a little nervous because it's the first time I've ever done this, but thanks so much for having me.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:32]:
Okay. Yeah, my pleasure. And I'm sure we're going to have a great time. The reason why I immediately, pretty much immediately reached out to Esmeralda to come on the show is because I love all of her videos. She talks about lots of different subjects. Actually, I think the original connecting topic that got us to be intersecting in the interwebs is the topic of journaling and using a physical pen to paper kind of journal to have a place to collect your thoughts, to think about your own life, to plan for your future, and to make sense of all the chaos and of life. And I just loved Esmeralda's voice, her point of view, the fact that she was thinking about all these things. And she's got this beautiful design for her videos as well.

Dr. Christine Li [00:03:27]:
So I'm just gonna turn the mic over to Esmeralda because I barely know her. I know her just from TikTok and I can't wait to hear her backstory and what she'd like to share with us today.

Esmeralda Morales [00:03:38]:
Yeah, absolutely. So I was really nervous to start cheering on TikTok because I think anybody's kind of nervous about putting their face and their voice online. It's like that cringe feeling you get when you listen to your voicemail and you're like, oh, God, that's what I sound like. But I've worked in film for a little under 10 years and at the end of last year, I turned 33 and also had this moment where I really felt kind of disconnected from my creativity a lot, which is kind of ironic because I joined film and started working in film because I wanted to be creative. I worked in the art department starting out, and I have been journaling for a long time, probably over 15 years now. But I started morning pages years back when I started in the film industry. And it always kind of has been a grounding practice and that I know that it's a place that I can go and kind of like get out my frustrations, my fears, but also like my hopes and dreams and things that I want to manifest, I guess, for lack of a better word. So that's kind of been this driving factor.

Esmeralda Morales [00:04:48]:
And so as I turned 33 and I was. I was working on a show, I was working like 18 hours a day, including my commute, which is not a lot of time for anything outside of sleeping maybe. And so I started to really think about how I felt a little bit like a, like, passive participant in my life as versus an active participant. And I think a lot of that can come down to, you know, we're on our phones so much more now. The age of the Internet is one that follows us everywhere that we go. And it felt like that was a contributing factor to the reasons that I felt disconnected. While, yes, I was working a lot, the time that I was spent not working was spent doom scrolling because I was so overwhelmed. With the fact that I had no time.

Esmeralda Morales [00:05:36]:
And so I was giving myself less time by doing that. And in January, I decided to kind of go on this analog journey that I've kind of been, you know, going back and forth between over the last couple of years where I've deleted social media off my phone and only used it on my desktop. But then typically I would redownload it and the whole thing would act as though I never happened. And so this time I wanted it to be different. And I also really wanted to kind of bring creativity back to my life in a more meaningful, intentional, and like, longstanding way. And so I brought back the journal ecosystem and it's basically, you can have different journals for different types of things. For years I tried doing this. It just did not work for me because I think that I tried to do too much at once.

Esmeralda Morales [00:06:26]:
And I think that's the thing with social media also. It kind of draws us in because you're like, oh, I need this journal or I want to try this new thing. And so you try to tackle everything all at once. And it's impossible, I feel like, to keep up with it. So I took what I was already doing, which was my morning pages and my work journal, and I kind of started seeing, okay, what can I take from this and what can I take from what I use on my phone? And put that in a physical pen to paper aspect, because I wanted again to see what it was that I was engaging with, see what I was saving, what was interesting, me. And also my ideas. A lot of times I would have ideas when I was on set and I would maybe write them down in a note app or sometimes I had this bad habit of like creating a text message that I wouldn't send and I'd put all my ideas there only to forget about it and then lose all of them. And so I started writing everything down.

Esmeralda Morales [00:07:19]:
And the act of creating in that way almost made me consume less. And it started making me just like the. The inkling of creativity again. And that I think has allowed me to kind of snowball into really going more analog. I've now at this point, I don't use the Notes app on my phone. I don't have any social media on my phone except for TikTok, only because it's not really seamless to post online or use it on the web version, which I'm trying actively to figure out. And I'm almost create, like I'm trying to create the Internet as a place that I go to again where I Go to my desk and I use my Internet and the things that I would use in that way at a dedicated location. And then everything else is notebooks or more analog.

Esmeralda Morales [00:08:08]:
And so that's kind of what started the journey, essentially, is I was like, oh, man, I need to do something different, and I need to do it quickly because I was feeling so weighed down by decisions that I was kind of putting on myself. And so that was a hard reckoning. Also realizing that I was, like, the source of my own lack of creativity and also, like, my own overwhelm. I was kind of creating a bigger situation for myself. So. Yeah.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:33]:
All right, thank you. I have at least four questions, all on different topics. But I want to thank you for that introduction and the story of how you thought things needed to change and how you committed to figuring this out. How to make your power return to you, it sounds like. And your creativity, which I can't wait to hear more about. First, I think if you could describe for our audience, because I. I'm. I have a hunch that most of our audience does not know what morning pages are.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:07]:
So you could describe that for all of us.

Esmeralda Morales [00:09:10]:
Yeah, absolutely. So morning pages are a concept that comes from the Artist's Way, which was written by Julia Cameron. I think it was written back in the 80s, and she wrote it for people who she calls blocked artists. And it's one of the tools that she tells you to use throughout the Artist's Way. And it's three pages of longhand writing, essential that you do every morning before you do anything else. She tells you to wake up 15 to 20 minutes early. You're supposed to write it almost as though it's like very stream of consciousness. It's not supposed to be, like, very curated writing, anything like that.

Esmeralda Morales [00:09:46]:
It's really to get your thoughts on paper before the day has influenced you. And she says that you could do it on just loose leaf paper and then stick it in an envelope, and you don't read it for the first, like, 12 weeks or six weeks, something like that. But you can also use a journal. I think that it was written so long ago that some of it doesn't always carry over. And so I think that my biggest thing when I tell people about the morning pages is do what works for you at the beginning, because it can be kind of daunting to show up to 3 pages and be expected to write. And she does say, like, it doesn't matter what you write. And so sometimes I will literally write. I don't know what I'm writing this morning.

Esmeralda Morales [00:10:22]:
I have nothing to say. And that sometimes allows my brain to pick up the thread and. And I go on a tangent and I'm like, okay, this is something that has been bothering me or that I've been thinking about. And it allows my brain to kind of take space up on the page and then continue. So it's just three. Three pages. But also, I think accessibility wise, if somebody needed to do that, you know, typing, if that's easier for them, or, you know, audio, like, record audio, I think showing up and documenting your thoughts in those ways, I think is the biggest thing. And the format, I think, you know, you do what works for best for you.

Esmeralda Morales [00:10:57]:
I think that she would prefer you did it versus not doing it at all. At least that's how I interpret it. So, yeah.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:03]:
Okay. While you were giving me your answer to that question, I started wondering, what effect has doing morning pages in particular had on you? Does it make you more courageous? Does it make you more aware of yourself? What have you noticed?

Esmeralda Morales [00:11:23]:
I think it definitely makes me way more aware of myself. I think that it also makes me very calm throughout the day. I feel very collected. Because if I do feel maybe some frustrations or I'm working through something emotionally, I can put it aside on the pages and I can show up, like, wholly present throughout the day and I can say, okay, I've written this out. I know I'm feeling this way. I know I need to work through it, but I don't need to carry it with me throughout the day. So. And I would say courageous.

Esmeralda Morales [00:11:54]:
Also. I think that there are things that I have written in my pages that I'm like, okay, I really want to pursue this thing. And working through why I might be qualified for that or why I. It might be the right move for my career, for the trajectory of my life, it gives me kind of like that push to say, why not? Like, you know, you never know what could happen. And I think that that's been a really cool outlook too.

Dr. Christine Li [00:12:19]:
Yeah, that is very, very cool. Because I'm thinking if you're staring yourself on the page at yourself on the page, that you kind of can't deny that there's a reality to your wishes. And I think when we keep them just in our imagination, not visible, they can drift away. They can get diluted by the day's stress. They can get diluted by our jobs and people in our lives. So to just have a record of what you were wanting even a week ago, I think is just such a nice gift to Yourself. So, yeah, I'm digging this. I've only succeeded to do, like, a morning paragraph.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:01]:
That's as far as I know, that's better than nothing. Yeah, there you go. And I enjoy that. And actually, I will share at this point my own mini journaling journey, because I've only been doing it for a couple of months, never have journaled successfully before. And I feel the reason why I've succeeded this time is because I just allowed it to be whatever it was going to turn into, that I didn't feel like I needed to fit into a frame of morning pages or anything else. And of course, it's a little bit messy and all over the place, but it is happening. So I. I just want to share that with you and the audience, too, because you don't need a pretty anything.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:42]:
You don't need a pretty pen, even. You just need a writing implement and some paper and a few minutes in the morning. And I do agree that the morning's a great time to capture your free self, your free thinking self.

Esmeralda Morales [00:13:55]:
I also, I listened to your podcast episode about your journaling and how you. You mentioned about how you had purchased this planner and then you didn't use it. And I think that's a big thing, too. Like, we sometimes want to save it for the perfect moment, or maybe we want it to look exactly a certain way because we see it online a certain way. So I think it's really cool that you were able to kind of bring yourself back to it and use it. I kind of did something similar where I used a concept planner that my mom had gotten me, like, in 2019, and I hadn't used it. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to repurpose it, and I'm going to allow it to just not be perfect because it's showing growth. It's showing.

Esmeralda Morales [00:14:33]:
Okay, I'm still doing something, and no matter what it looks like, I'm getting pen to paper and making something of this thing that's just otherwise just been sitting there. So I think that was really cool, too. I loved listening to that episode.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:48]:
Oh, thank you. Thank you for listening. Yeah, thank you for bringing back that information, too. Now I'm going to move to the topic of passivity in our lives. And do you think you're seeing this in your peers and your coworkers, in your family members? Have you noticed that? Or is that something that was just a purely personal thing? Do you feel like this is something that maybe many people are going through?

Esmeralda Morales [00:15:15]:
I think it's something that a lot of people are going through. I, especially working in film and tv, I tend to pay attention a lot to how people are consuming media and their relationship to media as a whole, whether it's the Internet or streaming services, whatever that looks like. And I think that a lot of people are feeling very overwhelmed with just how many options there are so many choices. And sometimes I say, and I like, joke that too much information isn't always a good thing because you get stuck in analysis paralysis. You're like, oh, do I want to watch the show or do I want to watch this other show or do I want to read this book or that book? And sometimes we get so overwhelmed we choose nothing and we then go back to doom scrolling. But also, not only that, but I think that everything that we consume and we interact with right now is decided on by an algorithm. And so our decisions regarding music and TV and movies is influenced by these really strong programs that have been created intentionally to capture our attention and to keep us in an app like Netflix or maybe, you know, on an app like TikTok, like even Spotify. You know what I mean? And so are we finding things that we really enjoy, or are we finding things that other people think we will enjoy? And I think there's a little bit of crossover.

Esmeralda Morales [00:16:40]:
I think that there's a reason these algorithms work so well. It's because they are able to capture things that we enjoy. But it kind of takes away the joy, a little bit of going down a rabbit hole and finding music on YouTube and finding a new artist that you otherwise never would have connected with, or even finding different artists that might be out there that you never would have engaged with. Your, I think worldview is limited a little bit. It's now closed off. Which, you know, again, sometimes it's a good thing. But I think that the way that there are echo chambers and there could be echo chambers in all sorts of things, and I feel like we sometimes see that. And so there's a lot of discourse about watching the same things, about how people are dressing the same.

Esmeralda Morales [00:17:24]:
And so I think that I'm seeing it a lot in everybody. And so I was kind of like, okay, how can I take back my attention, essentially? And I've, in reading a lot and watching a lot about media consumption and how we're interacting with it, comes this topic of, like, our attention is currency, and if we're not being charged for a service, then what is the cost? And the cost is our attention. So going analog has been kind of my way to take Back my attention. My. You don't get my currency for free. You know what I mean? My attention for free. So kind of figuring out and navigating that relationship that I have with media and encouraging others to do the same and whatever way that looks for them, because I think that again, sometimes it can be like an all or nothing approach. And I don't always think that that's like the best way.

Esmeralda Morales [00:18:15]:
I think, like, even going low tech, you know, I think it kind of reminds me of like the sober, curious moment where people have gone sober or they're like, hey, are you curious about being sober? And it just encourages people to take the step if they're interested without feeling the pressure of, oh, now I have to eliminate all these things or buy all these new gadgets to do this thing. It's like, no, use what you have and go from there and kind of build upon it. So that's the long winded answer of saying yes. I think I'm seeing it in everybody, and I think people are really curious and interested in kind of how they can also take back their attention and become active, I think, in their own lives again.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:55]:
You are such a wonderful thinker and I so appreciate hearing your observation. So I just wanted to put that there. And coincidentally, after I went to the gym this morning for my regular dance class, I was sitting at a table with the dance teacher and two other friends from class. And the dance teacher, who is a little bit older than I am, coincidentally, does not use social media or she's not on any of these platforms. And she was kind of upset that she had missed a picture that our friend had posted. And I just said, stay off social media. That if I, if I had a wish for her, it would be that she keeps the piece that she has and that we get to tell her what she might really need to see. And really, most of the things are not essential.

Dr. Christine Li [00:19:44]:
They're. They're things that we might be interested in or enthusiastic about or curious about, but none of these things are really essential.

Esmeralda Morales [00:19:54]:
Right?

Dr. Christine Li [00:19:54]:
And I just admire people who are able to set up boundaries like you have, and also to set up real limits like my dance teacher has. And of course, if you're listening and you have no boundaries with social media, just know that it's possible for you to regain some of your attention, if not all of your attention. And that's, that's why I brought Esmeralda on, and that's why I have the creativity of this podcast. It's really just my place to say, oh, I Consider this important. I would love to share this person's thoughts with you. I would like to share my thoughts with you. And you're making me think that this podcast really is that non algorithm based place, which makes it really fun. That's daunting too, by the way, but it's also really fun because it's mine, right? It's my brain is what I'm thinking about.

Dr. Christine Li [00:20:47]:
It's what I put my attention towards. So thank you for putting all of that into words. Now let's talk about commitment and discipline because you mentioned that you started this in January and so many of us have ideas in January, but you've actually stuck with it. So could you talk a little bit about what habits you've created, what keeps you committed? And have you always been this kind of a person who just has her idea and then goes with it?

Esmeralda Morales [00:21:19]:
Yeah, I wish I could say I've always been this person. And I guess in some ways I have. There are some things, like, you know, for example, pursuing my career I think did take a lot of dedication and commitment in finding the connections in order to get into the industry. I didn't know anybody when I first started in film. And so while I. There are lots of things that I look back on and I'm like, wow, I wasn't disciplined. Imagine if I had kept up with it, where I would be now. But I can't beat myself up because in that time I was really committed to my work.

Esmeralda Morales [00:21:52]:
And so I try to give myself grace there a little bit. But with this project specifically, I read this substack article in December and the woman who wrote it was talking about how her sister mentioned this 18 month rule. It was like, if you dedicate yourself 18 months to something, what would it look like at the end of 18 months? Would you be closer or would you be where you thought you might be? And I don't really know where that 18 month rule came from. It just kind of stuck in my brain a little bit. And in January, after I kind of, you know, after my birthday and such, and I was determining like what my journaling was going to look like and kind of how I was going to reclaim some of my time, I basically looked at the calendar date and looked out 18 months to decide, you know, okay, can I do this? And 18 months from January just happened to be the 10 year anniversary of me deciding to work in film. And I was like, wow, that's serendipitous. If I ever did see something, you know, serendipitous, like that. And so I was like, okay, I don't know what it's going to entail.

Esmeralda Morales [00:22:53]:
And I think that's the biggest thing is I didn't set hard and fast rules for what my commitment was going to look like. I really tried to let it kind of ebb and flow at the beginning. And so the first things that I did were started posting online just to get comfortable and to allow myself the space to kind of look a little goofy and, like, get comfortable and used to my own face and voice, like, reflected back at me all the time. And then I just continued with my morning pages. I was like, okay, these are two small things that I can do where it doesn't feel so time intensive that I know I'm setting myself up for failure. Because in the past, I think that's something that I've done where I've set these really lofty goals and I know they're not attainable. But in my brain I'm like, yeah, yeah, I could do that. But I think deep down I know that I can't.

Esmeralda Morales [00:23:41]:
And so it gives me an easy out to say, see, look, I couldn't do it. And so I did that. And then once I started kind of, I. I knew I had built this one habit of posting online and talking to the camera and doing voiceovers. I was like, okay, what's the next step? And I was almost able to, like, habit stack a little bit where I then, you know, started my documenting my creativity for 425 days, which is really daunting. I don't know why I decided to do that when I did, but I was like, okay, now, now or never. And, you know, I posted that stitch that you had with your video a couple of weeks ago because it didn't even dawn on me that I was doing these things that were essentially kind of leading to my success. And one of them being tracking what I was doing.

Esmeralda Morales [00:24:24]:
Unintentionally, without realizing it, I was tracking it through a virtual, like a video format. And so every single day I post a video and I say what day it is. So, like today, I think it's day 113 of me documenting every single day. And it's not to force myself to be creative. It's to show that a there are rest days. Some days you're feeling really down and you're feeling like kind of just unmotivated completely, but you at least wrote your morning pages. And then there are some days where I'm like, I can't stop writing all day. And I Can't even go to sleep because I have so many ideas.

Esmeralda Morales [00:25:01]:
But so that was really cool to see. And to see these things that I had started doing and documenting, it was one of them. And I think allowing myself a lot of grace, like, okay, if it's not perfect, it's okay. It's just about showing up. And I think those are the things that have allowed me to be really dedicated in this, this time around. Because, again, in the past, I've tried doing this, and I just haven't been able to. And I think also I. I started the Artist's Way also back in May or maybe end of April, and that was right after I wrapped my last show.

Esmeralda Morales [00:25:35]:
And I think that modifying that process for myself and making it work for me is another way that I realized, okay, I can actually be committed to myself and to what I'm setting my sights on. If I modify it to work for me instead of being really stringent and like, saying, okay, I can only do it, but if I do it exactly as it says in the book or as other people have done it, then that is a measure of success. Instead, I was like, okay, how can I do it for me and my life? And that's my measure of success instead? And that was, I think, a really big deal for me because a lot of people fall off on the Artist's way. You get to week four, and she says, cut out media. And you're like, what am I supposed to do?

Dr. Christine Li [00:26:18]:
So, yeah, so I'm reflecting on all the things that you've been saying. And in some ways, growing older causes you to reflect in this kind of way, right? About being more active or being less passive, or sometimes people may want to be less passive as they. More passive as they age. I should say we all get to reassess. And I think some of the distress of life sometimes is forgetting that we get to change things up, that we get to experiment, that we don't have to be perfect. We don't have to follow somebody's book to the te to get some value out of it or to get some learning or experience from it. And that's what I've been learning, because my audience, the people who tend to come to me to work with me, are a little bit older than I am. So I've been learning all these things about this latter phase of life, the second half of life, or second chapter some people call it.

Dr. Christine Li [00:27:20]:
And I really do feel like you've got a head start on this life reassessment, and that this is really Just a deep way of caring for yourself, which I love. And I'm really seeing in person now across the screen.

Esmeralda Morales [00:27:35]:
Oh, thank you.

Dr. Christine Li [00:27:37]:
Yeah, thank you. What have you learned from the consistency?

Esmeralda Morales [00:27:43]:
I. I think this is the thing that is the most shocking to me and the thing that I have so much fun talking about because the consistency in just posting videos online has really had a like, trickle down effect into other areas of my life where I was really surprised because now I'm, you know, I'm being consistent with myself in posting videos and in showing up for my creativity and I'm realizing that, oh, I can have this commitment to myself. And so I think what it's made me realize is that a lot of the distress that I was feeling was because I was setting really lofty goals for myself. Things that I knew I wouldn't be able to achieve because it was just unrealistic kind of thing. Unrealistic in that I was giving myself short timeframes, big goals instead of like big timeframes, big, big goals. And so, so yeah, it's. It's trickled down into other areas of my life in ways that it makes me show up at work and the way that I'm able to be present and to. Not for me, especially with my career, I always try to give 110% because where I'm at in the moment is what I feel needs my attention and my dedication because I've opted into this job, these things.

Esmeralda Morales [00:29:00]:
And there have been times in the past where I'm so overwhelmed by the fact that I'm not being creative or I'm not being committed to myself and my own creativity that I then just dwell on it a lot. And I've been able to release a lot of that because I know that I am being consistent for myself. And even though I would love to wake up tomorrow and be exactly where I want to be, I at least know that it's going to happen if I continue on the path that I'm on. There's that saying that people are, you know, people always say, like, the time's gonna pass anyway. Like between now and next year, the time's gonna pass regardless what I do is what sets the outcome. And so that I think, you know, I've always heard it, but I never really like applied it to myself. And this is the first time that through my consistency I'm like, the time's gonna pass anyway. Like, I'm not so overwhelmed or things don't feel so daunting because I've been able to show up in these small ways.

Esmeralda Morales [00:29:54]:
So I think that's like the biggest thing. And seeing how it applies in other areas of my life too, and how I have the capacity to bring on new ideas or new disciplines, that type of thing, because I have been showing myself that I am capable. So, yeah, I love this.

Dr. Christine Li [00:30:13]:
I think so often people stress about lack of time and I think you just described how you find the time because you've got 18 hour work days, you've got a commute, you've got fatigue from that experience, I'm sure, at least some of the time. And yet you know that even in a small amount of time, you can create something for yourself. And I just wanted to highlight that piece because whatever change you want to see, there's a space for it. There really is. I think the stress again comes when we feel like we're on the verge of missing out on an experience that we really care about and that's very personal to each one of us. We're wildly different human beings, but we all have this power of choice, this power of commitment, this power of discipline and the power of creativity. And I think you are the perfect guest to demonstrate how you can take this stuff back and make something beautiful from it. One more question I think is about creativity.

Dr. Christine Li [00:31:29]:
What does it mean for you? Because I don't think we captured that, we've been talking about it as a concept, but I'm wondering more specifically, specifically what that means for you in your life.

Esmeralda Morales [00:31:39]:
Yeah, absolutely. So I really want to write long term and I, for a long time before I started working in film, I, you know, I went to school for international affairs, I then worked in marketing. I never really saw art or a creative career as something that was really like an option for me because I was first generation, I was the eldest daughter in my immediate family and people didn't really have art focused careers. And so when I started working in film, I thought that that was kind of enough. And I started realizing in the last couple of years that actually I really wanted to be the one telling the stories and whether it was for film or if I wanted to write for books. And so I've been really focused on a young adult fantasy book that I've been writing a coming of life book also. And I would still really like to write for the screen also. And so finding ways to write every single day outside of my morning pages.

Esmeralda Morales [00:32:41]:
So that has been looking like finding an hour every single day or even 30 minutes to write X amount of words. Sometimes the word count changes, you know, the goal, as long as I'm able to show up to the page and write some more. And then also, I really like the idea of mixing the visual arts with, you know, I guess the moving image with written word. I think that's very cool. And so that's something else that I've been trying to work on. I've been incorporating. I've been trying to incorporate storytelling a little bit more into my videos. And I have a fun project where I almost want to treat some of my stories that I'm based on what I'm going through in my life as like a series where I record it and just kind of practice.

Esmeralda Morales [00:33:28]:
And then it also influences my career. So practicing different camera angles or the story beats and things like that. And so that's something that I'm really excited about. And that's kind of what creativity looks like for me. But I think that art isn't everything. So I feel like if people aren't, you know, painters or sculptors, like, it doesn't mean that you're not an artist. Like, it could be in the way that you put together a spreadsheet. For a long time, all I did was put together spreadsheets, and they were going to be really pretty spreadsheets.

Esmeralda Morales [00:33:54]:
So I think that finding it in all the little different ways that you live your life, I think is really cool. The way you bake bread, the way you make pasta, the way you mow your grass, you know, all of those things, I think have the ability to let you be creative or to find art if you're looking for it.

Dr. Christine Li [00:34:12]:
So, yeah, yeah, I think you're communicating the power of enthusiasm so that we didn't include in the long list of things that you represent. I think when we bring joy to what we do, it really doesn't matter what the format is. It's creating kind of expanding the sense of joy and. And instilling joy within ourselves, which then carries over to other people. So thank you for bringing your joy and creativity and ideas to this show. And we are going to stay in touch, at very least on TikTok. And I'm so glad we got today. Could you tell our listeners how they can stay in touch with you and get you on TikTok?

Esmeralda Morales [00:34:51]:
Yeah, absolutely. So on TikTok, I am @ Esmeralda Elsa Underscore. And then my website is very similar. It's esmeralda elsa.com. it is kind of in a pardon our mess stage because I'm revamping it. But there is a place where you can leave an email and I can send an update once it has been updated and changed and all of those things.

Dr. Christine Li [00:35:16]:
But yeah, yeah, I, I definitely encourage everyone to follow Esmeralda on TikTok. Her storytelling is great. They're really quick videos. They're beautiful. And as you can tell, so is she. So, Esmeralda, thank you. Thank you, thank you for, for accepting my wild invitation and for bringing yourself onto the show.

Esmeralda Morales [00:35:38]:
Yeah, thank you for having me. I've. It's been a blast and I'm so happy that we connected. I watch your videos religiously, especially the ones about decluttering and.

Dr. Christine Li [00:35:47]:
Yeah, okay, wonderful. Well, you know, since you mentioned decluttering, I'm going to put in a pitch for my upcoming decluttering challenge. I don't know if you know about that. It is starting September 8th. Everyone is welcome to come. It's the 10th round of my re energize your home five day decluttering challenge. It's simple. There's hundreds of women and a couple men and everyone's invited.

Dr. Christine Li [00:36:13]:
And you can all join at maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/challenge again, maketimeforsucces podcast.com/challenge. I'll have that and Esmeralda's information in our show notes in case you're driving or doing something super fun like gymnastics or something like that where you don't have pen and paper. And Esmeralda and I are wishing you all more creativity, more personal power, more of what you want. What would you like to leave our audience with? Any words of extra wisdom?

Esmeralda Morales [00:36:51]:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that if you are feeling frustrated or you're feeling overwhelmed, I think the biggest thing is to allow yourself grace and to recognize that there's always tomorrow and you don't have to wait till tomorrow. And you could decide right now that in the next five minutes you're going to get your pen and paper or you're going to do that fun thing for yourself because it doesn't have to wait. You can do it when the time, you know, when the call strikes, you can, you can take it up. So I think allow yourself grace and the space also to pursue what brings you joy.

Dr. Christine Li [00:37:25]:
I love it. Believe in yourself. Great advice to end on. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And thank you listeners for being with us today too. I will see you next week on the Make Time for Success podcast. Take care. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success podcast.

Dr. Christine Li [00:37:45]:
If you enjoyed what you heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can Also Visit our website maketime4successpodcast.com for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources we mention on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name Procrastination Coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. Talk to you soon.