Rebecca Hulse: Rebellious Rituals

Our interview of Rebecca Hulse for “The Creative Influencer” podcast is available today for download on iTunes, Spotify, and premier platforms everywhere.

Rebeca is a speaker and author who is “in the business of change.” She recently published the book Rebellious Rituals, a personal development guide for creatives to nurture their work and themselves through routines that help foster their creative process.

Rebecca shares some of the lessons and insight she has learned on her journey traveling the world, coaching thousands of creatives on finding success in their work.

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A transcript of the episode follows:

Jon Pfeiffer:
I am joined today by Rebecca Hulse. Thank you for coining on to the podcast.

Rebecca Hulse:
My pleasure. I'm happy to be here.

Jon Pfeiffer:
You are the author of Rebellious Rituals, which we'll get into. And I'll even... The blurbs when it shows up. You are from New Zealand, true?

Rebecca Hulse:
Yes.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And we talked about it before we started the interview, but that's where you are now?

Rebecca Hulse:
Yes, I am. I'm in Christchurch, New Zealand, my hometown.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And because of that, I didn't realize the time difference. So, you are 7:30 AM your time?

Rebecca Hulse:
Good morning, if you're listening to this in the morning.

Jon Pfeiffer:
In LA time, we are 12:30, so there's a little bit of a difference.

Rebecca Hulse:
Very civil.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So, how would you describe your occupation?

Rebecca Hulse:
I would say I'm in the business of change.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And what set you down that path?

Rebecca Hulse:
That I love change. Believe it or not, even when my own mind and control freak habits get in the way, I still love and prefer change, over anything else.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Which I'm going to go out of order how I prepared this, because I subscribe to your newsletter, and there's an email that just came in two days ago was about the change that COVID brought you.

Rebecca Hulse:
Oh yes. I'm a little happy anniversary moments.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Yes. How would you describe your COVID moment?

Rebecca Hulse:
Quiet. Deafeningly quiet.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Have you been in New Zealand the entire time?

Rebecca Hulse:
For COVID? Yes. Before that? No.

Jon Pfeiffer:
You were before that, from what I've read, you were a traveler?

Rebecca Hulse:
Yeah, I was putting on live and personal development and business conferences all around the world. And then before that I was traveling on cruise ships. So I had been basically nonstop traveling and working for 10 years

Jon Pfeiffer:
And then it stopped?

Rebecca Hulse:
And then it stops and I had to figure out how to live my life again.

Jon Pfeiffer:
What was the first thing you did?

Rebecca Hulse:
I slept, I really did. I never knew that I was that tired. But this is the wonderful and amazing things about our bodies is that they want to serve us. They want to do what we want to do. They want to provide that contribution. And so I never thought I had a problem. And that was what was so surprising to me is when you go around the world and you're teaching and you're living in these tools and you think, "Yeah, everything's great. Nothing's a problem here." And then you get home and you get quiet. And all of a sudden you're like, "Oh. Oops, I actually have been taking more than I have been giving."

Jon Pfeiffer:
Earlier, you said you were on cruise ships. You may not remember this, but your first YouTube video is from a room on a cruise ship. It was on the Jewel of the Seas in February of 2013.

Rebecca Hulse:
You have done some good research, my friend. I think I do remember that video. I had affirmations up on the wall...

Jon Pfeiffer:
How did you come to be on a cruise ship long enough to do YouTube videos?

Rebecca Hulse:
Sorry. That question-

Jon Pfeiffer:
Oh, sorry. What happen is I set paper down on the speakers. I have a MacBook Pro and the microphone is right below the speakers. So how did it come to be that you were on a cruise ship for your first YouTube video?

Rebecca Hulse:
So my parents had always told me that you should go after your dreams. You should go big, you should do whatever it is you want to do. And because they were smart and savvy business people and knowing me as the princess I am, they also said, "You can do whatever you want to do, but also you might want to run a business so that you actually have a second income stream." So I wanted to be a professional dancer. I wanted to travel the world. So cruise ships were one of the things that I set my heart after. And I went and I achieved that. But then as I was starting to get closer to that goal, and it was actually really happening, things got a lot easier and I'm not good with free time. I get bored. And then I destroy everything. So I got this space of free time and I was like, "Well, I better start learning about business."

And what I was learning was that you have to use your capacities in your gifts in order to create a really great business. And this is 10 years ago now. So this was before all of the courses of, do what you love and the money will come. But I had been raised on personal development almost to the point of being a junkie. So I started teaching some of the tools that I knew about goal-setting and mindset and working with energy. And I was on the cruise ship, in my free time on the cruise ship, creating my personal development, my coaching business. And that's how you found that way back when, retro Rebecca video.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Which leads us to the book. What led you to the title, Rebellious Rituals?

Rebecca Hulse:
Well, this was actually work shopped with a dear friend of mine, Laura Murray, who is a fellow business coach. And we were trying to get to the essence of what I wanted, because what I knew that the book was and what I was creating was a rebellion to meditation. It was a rebellion to all of this...

Jon Pfeiffer:
Wait, wait a meditation break. Ommmm... [laughter]

Rebecca Hulse:
Yeah, that's not my thing. And this is not a dig on meditation, but it is a dig on that, if you find a tool and it doesn't work for you, it's not you: that's wrong. And I had spent years making myself wrong for trying to fit into this high vibration spiritual life. And the sassy part of my mind would not ever shut up and go, "Yeah, right." And I realized that I needed to find some tools that actually suited me and I did, but this entire book was based on the premise that you have to find the tools that work for you. And you're allowed to say, "Screw you," to all the tools that don't work. So the title is Rebellious Ritual, because it's about saying, "Screw you," to everything outside, all the tools that don't work and starting saying, "Yes," to what does work.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And we'll get... I'm going to dive into the book in a second, but one of the resources on your website was a worksheet and instructions on start in the right place guide that I pulled. And I looked at, and it is great. If you are a budding influencer, this would be a great way to identify your audience. So I wanted to call that out. That's free on the website.

Rebecca Hulse:
It is. It's a mistake, almost that that's free on the website, because that's my signature process. But I take coaches and healers and all of the weird, wonderful people that are creative that want to share a gift in the world. I take them through that process. So yes, that is free on my website and it's actually insane.

Jon Pfeiffer:
I'm going to pick up on the word weird, because one of the very first exercises you have in the book is to start a weird list.

Rebecca Hulse:
I do.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Why weird list?

Rebecca Hulse:
So first we're going to get geeky and then we're going to get into energy. So to get geeky first, a lot of the dictionary definitions started changing to become more colloquial around 1946. So if you pick up a dictionary before there, you will see that the definition of weird means of fate, spirit and destiny, which if you just get a sense of the energy when we're talking about this, it's almost this acknowledgement of, "Oh yeah. That feels more congruent." So I'm very big on using energetically correct words. So then when it comes to creating a weird list, everything that we think is weird is different, is unlike other people, is actually a huge gift about us.

But most of the time we don't acknowledge it. If you feel like you're being told that you're flighty or flaky, maybe it's that you actually have the ability to change easily. And I talk about some of my own personal examples in this section in the book, but this is actually not about my examples that said that, looking at what you have, that you've been judging as weird or wrong about you and taking that and empowering yourself to look at what's actually the capacity here.

Jon Pfeiffer:
You have to that point, you have an Instagram post that says this is, "Literally everything you think is a weakness about you is one of your greatest strengths."

Rebecca Hulse:
Yes.

Jon Pfeiffer:
What do you mean and what are yours?

Rebecca Hulse:
What I mean is that everything you are is created by you. And so you may have decided or defined something as being a weakness, but is that actually true or is that just your judgment of where you're at today? My challenge, my invitation to you would be to actually start to look at those and look at what's actually the capacity underneath this. And that's a really good question that you can use. You asked about some of mine. Control, would definitely be one of them. But one of the things that I've learned is instead of trying to control to create a result, I try and use my control-freak capacities to create something beyond what I could expect. So I try to leave an open space at the end of whatever and trying to contain, manage for it to surprise and delight me.

Jon Pfeiffer:
It's not really a smooth transition, but it's a transition of going back.

Rebecca Hulse:
Okay, we'll do it.

Jon Pfeiffer:
You talked about morning questions. You said that something, your dad did, laminated shower questions.

Rebecca Hulse:
I have.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Does it work better if you eliminate your shower questions?

Rebecca Hulse:
Well, my dad had these pages and he would walk... He would go for his morning, walk, rain or shine with these pieces of paper and they would, they would always get wet. And I saw them. I was like, "This is not very..." First it's like, it's not ergonomic to look down at a piece of paper while you're walking. I thought that was insane, but I did get eventually the concept. And I was like, "Where's the place I'm going to be every day?" And I was like, "It's my shower." Other people, they love their shower for getting ideas, but I was never one of those person that the shower was my place of idea. So I was like, "Let me turn this into a place of productivity, of creating the energy I want to have for my day." So I stuck a list of questions up there and I laminated them. So they'd stay good in the shower. And it works. It's there every day.

Jon Pfeiffer:
You still have that practice?

Rebecca Hulse:
I still have it in practice. I did it this morning.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Tell us a couple of the questions on the laminated shower sheet.

Rebecca Hulse:
Okay, there's ones like, "Who am I today? And what grand and glorious adventure can I have?" That's actually the end question. Because it's start with the end, that's the last one I did. Another one is a prompt to let go of yesterday. It's actually an access consciousness clearing, but what it is, it's about to strain and create everything you were yesterday. So it's saying, "Let go of the past, start afresh. Don't carry your past into your future." And I loved clearings like this just to remind you to choose afresh.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Which does lead us into a better transition, your just leap ritual for those following along in their cheat sheet, that's on page 49 of the book. I love that cheat sheet. What is your "just leap" ritual?

Rebecca Hulse:
So this ritual is about that place where you want to jump forward into something, but your brain is overthinking or you're starting to get anxious or you know that there's more for you, but you haven't been able to access that yet. This is a ritual designed to support you, for me to be your friend as you actually make a big choice because we're taught to choose as little as possible. And I personally think that's scary. And for me, the more empowered you are, the easier is for you to make choices. And so during this ritual, and what we're actually exploring here at energetically is just the art of making choices and having your own back with those choices.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Why do you think we're taught to choose as little as possible?

Rebecca Hulse:
Well, first one of the concepts that we've taught super young is the either or concept, you can have this, or you can have this. Which is not true because we live in an abundant universe where there is many different possibilities. But if you're taught to only look at binary choices, then you can never start to actually look at, "Okay, what are all the possibilities here?" Because you think you can only handle two and you can only have one of those, you can't have both of those. So, that's just one small example. And then the other thing is that we're taught that every single choice is extremely meaningful and that if you get this wrong, you've got it wrong. And therefore it's done forever. Not that okay, this created some more awareness. You're you're now in a different place to where you were before the choice.

Now, what choice do you want to make? So with those two concepts, that's very paralyzing to be able to make a choice. So this is the antithesis of this, where it's like, "No, choose all the time," so that you're stronger at it. You trust yourself more and you know that if you screw up or if something doesn't go how you have planned... And spoiler alert: most of the time, it never goes how you have planned. But you get the ability to choose and choose again.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Can you talk about when something feels just out of reach, you even have a ritual over that.

Rebecca Hulse:
We do. So this is for that energy of like, "Oh, I got so close," or you know that you're near something, you can feel it coming to you, but it's just not there yet. It's really made for the impatient person, which is me. And so this is a way to help either energetically speed things up or for you to go that little bit further, that you hadn't realized that you had in you. So it's for both of those. And this particular ritual is actually based all in expanding your awareness. So your awareness in this case is actually more going into what is it you know deep intrinsically within you rather than what are the thoughts, the facts, what you've been taught. It's actually going all beyond that into more of a direct download. So when something's just out of reach, you actually don't need more information. How many times have, when we're about to make a choice and we don't know what to choose. We go to our friends, we go to our colleagues, we go to people that we admire.

We go to Facebook and we ask them to make the choice for us. So instead this is my invitation for you to not go external, but go internal.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So now just to make it more real, you'll have a "cranky" ritual?

Rebecca Hulse:
I do.

Jon Pfeiffer:
I can't imagine you get cranky?

Rebecca Hulse:
I do get cranky. My girlfriend would testify to that. Definitely, with the rebellious side comes the feisty and the cranky sides too. The good thing is that blows over pretty quickly, especially with a ritual like this. So most of us, especially if you've done any deep work, you will find some suppressed anger down in there somewhere. And that is scary when it comes up because, especially as women we're taught that that is not appropriate. It's not appropriate to be angry. It's not appropriate to get cranky, to have something irritate you, you have to swing by and be at peace with everything that comes your way. And I'm calling that out. I don't think that's okay anymore.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Why can't we just meditate?

Rebecca Hulse:
No, not having that.

Jon Pfeiffer:
It leads us to your "rebellious streak" ritual. Because I've heard you described yourself many times as rebellious. How old were you when you realized that you were rebellious?

Rebecca Hulse:
I think I was born knowing I was rebellious and it took me a while to acknowledge it, but it just started sneaking out into my life in different ways. And then I would say over the last, maybe five or six years, I've just embraced it fully.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Well, you wrote a book about it.

Rebecca Hulse:
I did.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Now, one of the topics that's near and dear to a lot of my clients is the "idea generator" ritual. Can you take us through a sample of how you can generate ideas?

Rebecca Hulse:
Yes. So for me, this is also where a little bit of humility comes into it because I don't personally believe that we come up with ideas. I believe that ideas come to us. They're an entity to themselves and they're going around going like, "Hey, will you make me, I'm looking for someone to help me be brought to life." And so for me, the idea generator is actually about walking yourself into that space where you are open to receiving ideas and you are allowing new ones to come through and you're consciously choosing what ones you brought want to bring to life. So from many creatives you have so many ideas and you're like, "Oh my God, I'm going to die before I create these all."

And that's true because there's more ideas that want to be created than there is time in the day. That's just a fact. So for me, this exercise brings ease in that you realize that you don't have to create everything today. It's going to be okay. And that second that you can actually invite new energies and ideas to come to you to be creative, because it really should be from a space of play. The martyr artist, that's over. We don't need that anymore to create, we can enjoy creation to its fullest.

Jon Pfeiffer:
I've heard authors talk about that. An idea will just come to them. It's just floating an ether and all of a sudden it comes to them. And it's the idea for a book that if they don't take that idea, somebody else is going to take that idea.

Rebecca Hulse:
Yeah. Because it will move on. There is a classic example in Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Big Magic, when she talks about an idea for a very specific stories set in the Amazon jungle and it actually moves onto her friend after she dropped it. And so her friend ended up actually writing that book. And was their take on it slightly different? Yes. But it was in essence that exact same idea.

Jon Pfeiffer:
That's actually the author I was thinking about.

Rebecca Hulse:
Is that? Okay, great.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Yeah, I read that in one of her books and I was like, "It's too strange to not be true."

Rebecca Hulse:
Exactly.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Yeah. So how long did it take you to write your book? Start to finish?

Rebecca Hulse:
The idea told me that it wanted to be a book in March and I was like, "Yeah, let's go, let's do this." And it was very clear. It was like, "No. I'm going to tell you when to write." So that was incredibly frustrating for a go getting creative. That's like, "Yeah, let's do all the things." So I was slowly seduced into writing this book and I didn't really put pen to paper until May for little snippets. And then I got to work creating all the material for over the next three months. And by September I put down the pen to page.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Oddly enough, you have your "writer's block" ritual?

Rebecca Hulse:
I do, very helpful ritual.

Jon Pfeiffer:
For authors, that happens to be a bit very helpful rituals. What do you do when you get writer's block?

Rebecca Hulse:
One of my favorite things to do actually is to first relax. You can't create when you're tense. You can, but there then you're pouring out your own energy instead of your ideas' energy. And that's how you create burnout, which is not very fun. So for me, first it's about relaxing and restoring. And then the second part of this is I fake my groove. So I will write out my words or someone else that I admire's words. And I ask all my clients to do this. If you're a videographer or you love talking, call someone and have a conversation with them. If you're a painter, draw someone else's picture. Create someone else's art, because by doing the action, you get back into it again. And then within no time, you're writing your own stuff.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And you end with a, "I need a drink" ritual. It's a 7.30 in the morning, so I hope we don't end this interview with an I need a drink-

Rebecca Hulse:
Well, you could still need a drink and have it be coffee.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Or tea.

Rebecca Hulse:
Exactly.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So the way it is in a book you end with cocktail recipes?

Rebecca Hulse:
I do. My wonderful friend is a great cocktail connoisseur, and she actually brought me into my own cocktail making enjoyment during lockdown. And I really wanted to add a little bit of her essence to this as a celebration. So there is a cocktail recipe in there but it's actually more about the energy of celebration. One of the things that I had noticed at that time was I was definitely using the whole, "I need to drink," because I don't want to deal with this. Therefore, I will get some alcohol in my system. I will relax more and then I will deal with it or I won't. And I was like, "Hmm, that's not very conscious." So instead, let's actually look at the craving underneath this because that's really what all the rebellious rituals are is, this is about being what you crave.

So what I looked at there was, "Okay, so what is it that I really crave? I crave this relaxation. I crave this moment of beauty and celebration." And so whether you have the drink or not during this ritual is actually irrelevant. That is actually just a personal choice, but it is about curating that energy of relaxation, of having a break and celebration.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Which COVID gave us a year and a half break.

Rebecca Hulse:
It did. And a whole new space for a lot of choices.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So I want to shift gears away from the book because I didn't ask you some... Vogue has the 93 questions al la Vogue, so there's no right or wrong. This is just...

Rebecca Hulse:
Jon's questions.

Jon Pfeiffer:
A little bit more about you. What question do you ask to find out about a person?

Rebecca Hulse:
I asked them when you're by yourself, what is it that you wish you did more of?

Jon Pfeiffer:
So I ask you when you're by yourself, what is it you wish you did more?

Rebecca Hulse:
Well, I think it's more just enjoying. Being more present and enjoying more time.

Jon Pfeiffer:
What question would you most like to know the answer to?

Rebecca Hulse:
Oh gosh, I'm not a fan of answers. So I'm not really sure about this one because for me, questions are all about garnering as many possibilities as possible. And as soon as you get to an answer, you stop. So I don't think I ever really do want to know the answer.

Jon Pfeiffer:
What TV channel doesn't exist, but should?

Rebecca Hulse:
The creative mess behind the scenes without drama, just when people are living in their creative mess.

Jon Pfeiffer:
That's actually would be a pretty good show. What's your favorite movie?

Rebecca Hulse:
Oh, that's our really hard question. I have so many, but today because I just watched it. I'm going to go with The Help.

Jon Pfeiffer:
What makes you laugh?

Rebecca Hulse:
Some so many things. Bad jokes. I love bad jokes. Irony.

Jon Pfeiffer:
If this weren't being recorded, I can make you laugh. What your guilty pleasure.

Rebecca Hulse:
I don't know that I have a guilty pleasure, but I do love a daytime bath.

Jon Pfeiffer:
What's your biggest pet peeve?

Rebecca Hulse:
People that complain and then don't make any choices.

Jon Pfeiffer:
How do you consume content?

Rebecca Hulse:
In very different ways depending on my energy at the time. But most of the time I see something and then either look at that and see, I hate that I could do that like this, or I love that I could create that like this.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Have you found any misconceptions about what it is to be an author?

Rebecca Hulse:
Many.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Which are?

Rebecca Hulse:
It's very different going from being a writer to an author. It's amazing that you feel the same, but everyone treats you different. That's the first one that I find hilarious. Because you still did the same work, but you just put it into a book and published it, instead of mixing many different articles and pieces, that could be the same length of work. The second one is that you still have to write after you've finished your project, you have to keep writing. Otherwise, you will no longer be yourself fully or be expressing or going further.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So is there a sequel to Rebellious Rituals?

Rebecca Hulse:
Well, there is a second book, but I don't know that it's necessarily a sequel. It's going to be called Idea Wrangler. And so it's a choose your own adventure, style guide to bringing an idea to life.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So it actually is... It may not be a true sequel, but it's an expansion.

Rebecca Hulse:
It is.

Jon Pfeiffer:
When do you anticipate that will be out?

Rebecca Hulse:
Next year.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Next year. And how can people find you on the internet?

Rebecca Hulse:
You can go to my website, Rebeccahulse.com. You can search that name on Instagram and Facebook too. I also have a group for crazy creative entrepreneurs on Facebook, which I feel like would be a great home for you guys. If you've listened to this podcast and you loved it.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Well, hang on. I'll come back, but thank you very much. It was a great pleasure.

Rebecca Hulse:
Thank you. I so enjoyed being here.

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