Kent 0:22

Hi, welcome to this episode today. We're going to talk a little bit about, something we've been thinking about and it came up. From, an event that occurred yesterday and I were talking a lot about our lives and priorities, and it was interesting because Anna asked me a question. Which we, when we plan our week, we usually do it by priority order. And we've always known that like for us, our top priority is God. And our second priority is our marriage. And our third priority is our children. And then like, there's like home and finances and jobs and all sorts of stuff under that. Right. And we figured out though, we figured out the order of those priorities. And health is somewhere in there. But in general. With our mostly relationship based prioritizations. she said, where does my relationship with myself?

Anna 1:14

Yeah, we're just self care, like exercise and sleep,

Kent 1:17

or just like self time, you know, like,

Anna 1:20

Relaxing time to read a book or something.

Kent 1:22

Yeah. And, and so. That was interesting because it was causing a lot of grief. I think for us, this. This question. And I think it was leading to some major problems. In our feelings of emotional health and motivation and everything relating to those things. And so. When I responded in that moment was well to me, if we think about it, scripturally. We believe in, in the Bible to be the word of God. And so the, we prioritize things obviously based on, on a lot of those. scriptures. And so when Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord, thy God, with all their heart. My mind and strength. And love thy neighbor as thyself, and so many people before us have obviously made. The astute observation that therefore you have to love yourself. If you're going to love your neighbor as yourself. And. in a lot of ways, I think that our love for ourselves. And our, sort of self-esteem, if you will really Very closely tied to our relationship with God. But it showed that I think that our relationship with ourselves goes pretty much right. Under. our relationship with God so that we can have something to. Extend our love through to other people. And so if we don't have it, we can't. Give it. and so a lot of that reflection is reflecting. it's something we were reflecting on tonight in regards to the feature filmmaker academy and how. how that affects us as filmmakers and as artists. And without getting too religious or even philosophical. We kind of want to maybe talk about it in somewhat of a more practical. Term. In the sense that priorities, I think are very practical. And I think that when we start to latch onto those priorities and start to mentally sort of accept certain priorities as, as defacto and Then they start to become efficacious in our lives and we start to actually behave according to those priorities and that will lead to real results.

Anna 3:27

Yeah, something that we try to do is. While we plan our week, we put the items in the calendar in priority order. Not necessarily like we wake up on Monday and do a bunch of like the first priority on Monday and the next priority on Tuesday. But. They, those things go on the calendar first, so that if there isn't room for all of the things, the ones that are a lesser priority are the ones that don't end up on the calendar don't And so I had not even had a category for myself. For a long time. And then eventually realized I need one. I need a category for taking care of myself, because that is something I spend time doing. And created one, but I didn't know where it went in the priority order. Like. You just described. And I think this is very common that we. Especially, I was talking to one of my clients today about this, that we as women and especially parents or mothers tend to have so many people who need us, that we're taking care of that our own needs just get pushed down, down, down until those are the ones that are getting. Off the calendar, they don't fit and we're not prioritizing them. And it can be this really frustrating cycle. Because. It is sort of like trying to give something you don't have or trying to use a tool that's not sharp. And we also discussed last night. This quote by Abraham Lincoln, where he said, give me six hours to chop down a tree and I'll spend the first four sharpening the ax. And four is a lot of hours to sharpen an ax. But. If you're not sharpening your ax, you're just hitting a tree with a dull. Metal. Eventually. Yeah. You're going to wear yourself out, but you're not going to make much progress And I was feeling that way. And sometimes I think we all feel that way where we're exhausted at the end of the day. And don't feel like we've made much progress. And sometimes that can be a sign that. We do need to sharpen our, saw our tool, your Is your instrument. It's how you make films. It's how you do everything you do. And so taking care of that body is very

Kent 5:40

important, And when I think that in the sense of taking care of that body, I have a couple of thoughts on this. First of all the body people talking about the mind body connection or whatever. Which I think is really silly because the mind, if you think of it as the organ, which is a brain is part of our body, right? It's like, oh, there's like this finger, hand connection. It's like one thing, you know, and so for me, this mind, body connection it's. Yeah, it. There's obviously like a sleep factor and there's a exercise factor and there's a education factor and a knowledge factor. And there's this, these exercise of these muscles and organs and everything. Right. And there's What are we consuming? You know, food and water and, and even

Anna 6:23

media, you

Kent 6:23

know, all of those. Too. And so as filmmakers, this becomes very practical in the sense that like you take care of yourself as a steward over a body. That has been given Whether you're an atheist or Christian or whatever. we all know that our bodies are given to us. Right? Like we didn't create ourselves and we didn't. bring ourselves into existence. some, one or something did. And so the point is, is that. we kind of have this responsibility for this thing that was given to us to take care of it. And so, I think that. As we pour a lot of value into ourselves. I don't think that that's. That this brings me to my second point that I wanted to make is. You had said something in the last night and maybe you could help me remember this. But we were talking about like, what is it. Like the difference between. Gluttony or. I don't know. doing what you want. You know, like where's this line between that and like helping other people or doing something that's like, Important or God's will, or whatever you think is like that higher thing. And. Do you remember what I'm talking about? I think

Anna 7:32

so. I think that I was. Thinking all of my wants were selfish and. Showing me. Selfish was the word. For example, I was wanting to exercise. And I was thinking that's kind of selfish to want. I don't know if to like, prioritize that above my family and home and children,

Kent 7:51

which is so funny to say out loud, because I feel like most people would think like, no, that's disciplined. That's not selfish. That's like good on you. You know, exercise. Like I don't ever want to exercise some people. I feel like you're on. I'm a rather veggie or watch Netflix. And it's like, yeah. I mean, there's like, there is selfish. Gluttonous lazy things we can do. And there's like responsible. Good things we can do. And many of those things have to do with our. Self care. Because once again, if we're physically weak, we can't help anyone. If we are broken and exhausted or mentally ill. It's hard to lift others, you know, if, and to lead, you know, and filmmakers are leaders. You know, if there's some sort of debilitating problem with our mind or body, which is all one thing. Then we're really going to not be able to function. As artists. And I think that we have this. Ridiculously false paradigm. Austin Kleon talks about this, of the. Of the troubled artist, this person who's like on drugs, just abusing themselves. No sleep, bad food. No healthy relationships. You know, some bachelor living in New York and some beat up apartment with rats and they're just producing. Great art right there. Just like sacrificing there. Their lives on the altar of art and. Maybe that exists sometimes. But it usually then we have, that's why rock stars die in their twenties and thirties, right? That's why we have like the rappers 26 club, right? Like the people who actually lived past 26. And it's like, It's because. Yeah, you might be able to make some like pretty amazing art. For like a tiny little bit, and then it just all goes. Down. But then you're not around. You can't make art anymore when you're dead or when you're in the hospital or when you're just broken to pieces. And then there's the people who like, don't really get going until they're in their fifties. And then they just make incredible stuff all the way through their eighties. And you get guys making their first Oscars, you know, when they're 83 and it's remarkable, you know, look at, look at the trajectory of careers like Ridley Scott and how many films he started making his forties versus his fifties versus his sixties. And then he started getting. He started really cooking in the seventies. I. I feel like somebody started making a ton of movies. And whether you like his movies or not. I'd rather have. That rhythm. Of artistic output. Where my greatest art is coming out of my. Maturity. As opposed to my. Like just. Drug-induced yeah. My sponsor. twenties or whatever, and it's probably going to be more valuable for the human race anyway, because I'm going to have more perspective And whatever. And so. So an idea of selfish, I think. Exercising is not selfish. I think

Anna 10:37

that the word health also. Is Clara sleeping.

Kent 10:40

Is not selfish.

Anna 10:41

Yeah, because if it's healthy, It's something that is, it is taking care of yourself. It is making yourself more able to perform and meet your duties that you need to. And my point

Kent 10:53

with yesterday was that it requires those all require effort. It requires effort to be disciplined enough to go to bed on time and to wake up early and to exercise. Even though you're like sleeping, that's not where they make healthy eating choices. You know, it's like those aren't selfish things. And yet we sometimes trick ourselves into thinking that they are. or we've journal or these are all self care things that I think actually make us better. People spouses, friends, siblings. Offspring.

Anna 11:21

Yeah. So we'll leave you with that, but just, Want to bring it up and touch on. The importance of self care and challenge you to find. way to prioritize it a little more in your life, make sure that you're living in a healthy way that you're doing activities regularly, that take care of your body, your instrument, and your soul as well. You know, there's mental health. As well as physical health. And. Things that nurture those parts of you will make you a better artist.

Kent 11:51

Yeah, absolutely. And. You are what you make. You make what you are rather. And that's something we've talked about before, around. I've mentioned many times Miyazaki made charitable films because he was charitable person and it stemmed from him in ways that can not stem from anyone else. And we've watched my movies where we go. Oh, I get what they're trying to do here. They're trying to make a lovely. Family happy film of some kind, but they're not any of those You know, it doesn't feel genuine. And then there's films where it's like, Oh, there was something so honest and real and. You know, Profound. Like when you watch something like the black stallion or, you know, some of my favorite Zaki films or whatever you go well, that someone cared about something deeply here. And even though it wasn't, it wasn't like, ah, 18 year olds are a great market, you know, and like, oh, these young parents want to take their kids to see something. It's like, it's like, no, like there's something genuine there. And so when we genuinely make ourselves into more whole people, And we have to. Create something of ourselves. And of course, I think service and. Extending ourselves out to other people is a part of that. I'm not saying that we only focus on ourselves and then we become ego egotistical. I'm saying that it's actually impossible to be selfless if we are abusing ourselves or not taking care of ourselves are not being stewards over our minds and bodies. So anyway, yeah, so I did not to overextend the point, but.

Anna 13:18

Yeah. When you make yourself a priority, you have so much more to give to the people around you and to your And what you're writing. There's more of you. There's more life experience. That you can contribute. And I think that that really does go a long

Kent 13:33

way. I agree. Well, thanks so much for joining us on this episode and we hope you found it valuable. And that you can take it and put it into practice as you continue to push forward on your own. journeys and your own projects, your own film, your own art. And, we hope to hear Pier you, we hope you hear us. On the next episode.

Anna 13:52

Talk to you later bye bye