I went into this conversation a little obsessed with the way Eliza Struthers-Jobin, aka Eliza SJ, makes things.

I tend to decide what something is supposed to become and then grip the wheel until I get it there. Eliza makes art almost the opposite way. She creates the conditions. A few rules. Some constraints. A little randomness. Then she lets the thing show her what it wants to be.

I called her a gardener. You can’t pry open a flower and tell it how to bloom.

Somewhere along the way, though, this stopped being a conversation about generative art.

We started talking about the split second when a grown adult forgets they’re being watched and plays like a kid again. About how horrifyingly early we learn to monitor ourselves. About wanting desperately to be understood. And realizing maybe that’s not actually the assignment.

About expertise as a place to hide. Creative loneliness. The work you make when no one is looking. Being a conduit instead of controlling the outcome. Beginning again. Changing your mind. Letting yourself be more than one thing.

And the question I haven’t really stopped thinking about since:

What is worth being misunderstood for?

Eliza is an artist and programmer whose work lives somewhere between code, interaction, chance, and the human beings who wander into it. She also writes flow.states, where she thinks about art, technology, AI, creative practice, and what all of this is doing to the way we make things.

Read flow.states: https://elizasj.substack.com/

Connect: https://www.instagram.com/iamelizasj

This one made me want to loosen my grip a little.

Maybe everything is written in pencil anyway. <3

There are some people who don’t give you answers so much as ask you a question you can’t quite go back to sleep after.

Jean-Marie Jobs is one of those people for me.

I met Jean-Marie through GAP Community years ago, after more than a decade of working in marketing and messaging. I remember sitting in my first training, watching the way she asked questions, and wanting to learn how to do that. Eventually, I went through GAP’s Coaching Academy and became certified in transformational coaching myself.

And one question Jean-Marie asked me during that season later became the question underneath the very first episode of this show.

So, this conversation has been a long time coming.

Jean-Marie is the founder of GAP Community, a master trainer, executive coach, and author of The Art of Feeding Heroes. She has spent decades helping people find their character and courage underneath their circumstances.

And this conversation is about what happens when we stop treating our humanity like a problem to solve.

We talk about the pristine, imaginary versions of ourselves we can keep safely intact by never fully stepping into our lives. Why Jean-Marie believes people don’t actually resist vision, they resist vulnerability. And what it means to choose a vision big enough to call you through the pain of transformation.

At one point she asks:

Do you have a vision bigger than your ego?

Jean-Marie also shares what being diagnosed with breast cancer taught her about uncertainty, surrender, and eventually something even harder: welcoming what she could not control.

What if uncertainty isn’t something to solve, but something to dance with?

What if you could be uncertain and still fully participate in your life?

We talk about the “holy urgency” that came out of that season, a friend’s reminder that someday is today, and what might change if we stopped assuming we have endless time to become who we keep saying we want to be.

We also get into some of the less flattering places.

The hidden payoffs underneath our chronic complaints. Why the story that we’re “overgiving” may sometimes conceal the things we’re unwilling to ask for. Why having needs is not the same thing as being needy. And how much suffering we create by turning every result into evidence about who we are.

Jean-Marie puts it simply:

Outcomes are poor masters. Maybe vision is the boss.

And:

You cannot learn from something you’re resisting or judging.

This is a conversation about shortening the distance between the life you keep imagining and the life you are actually willing to participate in.

About taking the next potent step before you know the thirty after it.

About remembering that your presence is also part of the resource.

And about hope. The kind that doesn’t require everything to look hopeful first.

Because, as Jean-Marie says near the end of our conversation, sometimes the place that looks completely shattered is the exact place where possibility is buried.

FIND JEAN-MARIE + GAP

Jean-Marie Jobs: @jeanmariejobs on Instagram

GAP Community: Transformational trainings, workshops, Coaching Academy, programs for adults and young people, and more at gapcommunity.com

Workshop Your Life: Reframing Your Relationship to Results: September 12 in Pasadena, California. A one-day GAP Community workshop for anyone wanting to change the way they relate to results, pressure, and forward movement.

GAP Coaching Academy: Learn more about GAP’s transformational coaching certification and training in the art of inquiry at gapcommunity.com/academy.

The Art of Feeding Heroes: Jean-Marie’s book on leadership, character, and calling the heroic forward in ourselves and others.

Interrupting our irregularly scheduled programming because I made something I’m very jazzed about as the kids never say.

The Messaging Pop-Up is two hours of high collaboration, low commitment for creative maniacs who are tired of sitting alone at their dining room table trying to think their way through their own work.

Bring the thing that’s bugging ya. The offer you can’t quite articulate or do justice. The half-baked idea. The positioning knot. The project you’re secretly wondering if you should blow up entirely.

We’ll put it on the proverbial table, turn it over, ask questions, let other smart people poke at it, and see what happens.

No 'best brand behavior' pls. We'll be a little reckless.

Just 10 people, two hours, live coaching, real-time feedback, and the kind of creative friction that makes you leave knowing what the hell you want to do next.

The first Messaging Pop-Up is August 27 and it’s $40. 5 spots left as of this recording.

Come let it rip: elena.myflodesk.com/messagingpopup.

And if you’re wondering whether the thing you’re wrestling with belongs in the digital space, just voice note me on Instagram @elenakunkel (www.instagram.com/elenakunkel) and ask me.

My six-year-old daughter looked at me and asked, “Mom, what can I do where I can win a trophy?”

It was wildly convicting because I could hear my own relationship with work inside that question. How often have I made the prize, the proof, or the outcome the whole point?

So I went down a rabbit hole to find out what science says actually happens when we make success our business. Turns out, it can make us less creative before we even begin, interfere with skills we already know how to use, and leave us more interested in checking whether the work succeeded than continuing to make it.

This episode is about what success quietly costs the work, and the questions that can bring us back to what we actually set out to create.

Which one is it for you?

The opposite of depression isn't happiness. It's expression.

This is the first episode of A Loving Disruption, and I'm starting with the question that rearranged my life. It was 2021, my daughter was one, and I walked into a 96 hour conference I did not want to attend, feeling stuck on a cellular level. A psychological sniper Jean Marie Jobs walked up to me and asked why I was there. I said I was stuck. She said stuckness is usually a symptom of two things, arrogance or avoidance, and asked me which one it was.

I've been unpacking that answer ever since.

In this one: why arrogance is really unwillingness, what the five frenemies cost you (look good, be right, be liked, stay safe, stay in control), why creating from a "not" traps your brain, and the question I ask myself every time I get stuck.

The closing question: if you were being more courageous today, what would you be doing?

Send me a voice note on Instagram @elenakunkel. I actually listen and respond to them.