Are You Talking to Be Heard or Understood?
The missing ingredient in your creative process.
What’s more important—saying it how you want or making sure your message is understood? In this episode of Your Creative Mind, Izolda Trakhtenberg challenges us to rethink communication and clarity. Through engaging storytelling, she explores the way we express ourselves, the importance of adapting to our audience, and how to find the balance between personal expression and being truly heard. Plus, she shares a fun insight from a brain-training app and a fascinating takeaway from a neuroscience of singing workshop! As Izolda prepares for a summer break from the podcast, she reminds listeners of the hundreds of past episodes filled with wisdom on creativity, mindfulness, and innovation. Tune in for practical, thought-provoking insights you can use right now to communicate with more impact.
Is your message landing or getting lost? Learn the trick to being heard.
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Episode Transcript
This podcast is all about using your innate creativity and mindfulness to build a life
Izolda: What is most important? What is your goal? Is it to say it the way you want to say it? Or is it to say it so that the person you’re speaking with understands you? Welcome to your Creative Mind. I’m Izolda Trakhtenberg and this podcast is all about using your innate creativity and mindfulness to build a life you love. Whether it’s through writing, music, dance, theater or any creative pursuit. We’ll explore how to tap into your unique potential to transform your work, relationships and daily life through inspiring conversations with world changing artists, entrepreneurs and innovators, or actionable insights. In my solo episodes, you’ll learn how to focus your energy, ignite your creativity and bring more joy and purpose to everything you do.
Your creative mind podcast host Izolda Trakhtenberg is taking a break
Hey there and welcome to the your creative mind podcast. I’m your host Izolda Trakhtenberg. Thanks so much for being here. I wanted to let you know that one of the things that’s going to be happening soon, probably in June, is that I am going to take a few months off. It has been well since I started this podcast low back many years ago now that I since I’ve taken a break and I’m going to take a break, I’m going to start, for lack of a better term, season two. What does that mean? What does that mean for you? Well, there are over, I believe, 600 episodes that you can choose from to listen. I would say from June 1 to September 1 is probably going to be the break time. I have a whole bunch of writing projects that I want to do and a whole bunch of singing projects that I want to do. And so I’m going to take the time, to do that and not focus so much on the show on this podcast. I’ll be back, don’t you worry. But I definitely am going to be taking a break. I highly encourage you to go to isoldat.com ycm m or isolda.com blog either one. Both links are in the show notes. They lead pretty much to the same place and you can find hundreds of podcast episodes to listen to. Go back through some of the really old ones. I might even bring back the archive of the original 300 somem episodes I did when this podcast was called tell your story better or the creative mindset or something like that. But I wanted to let you know that this is happening just so that you have kind of a heads up about it. And I’m going to be doing a few episodes here and there now in between interview episodes and of course to your creative table reads, episodes are Going to be here probably through the end of May, every Friday, although not, well, this last Friday. I guess it’s just been, it’s been a little busy and I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff to do. So, I’m just taking a little time to get stuff done and sometimes you have to do that.
I do a brain training app called Elevate Every Day
So I want to talk to you about the following. I’m going to ask you a question, and the question is, what do the following have in common? A Greek nymph who disappears but for her voice. A response after shouting into a canyon and a sound that reflects back. So you probably know exactly what this is. they are all crossword terms for the word echo. Their crossword clues, I should say, for the word echo. Why is that important? Well, if you don’t know the name of the Greek nymph, you might be looking at the hard version of a puzzle. I do, an app called, Elevate Every Day. It’s a brain training app. And I love the app. I’m not an affiliate or anything with them, but if you want a really fun brain training app that will train you not just your brain to do things more quickly or whatever, but they do have memory, they do have name recall, they do have a bunch of math. If you find that there’s some math stuff that you could train and get a little better at, they’re great. But also writing. If you have things like reading comprehension or coming up with other words, adjectives, things like that, looking at phrases and sayings and are you using them correctly, there’s all sorts. There are just a ton of different kinds of games that you can PR pray my brain that you can play every single day. And if you O years ago I bought, when they were trying to get people, to purchase the app, I bought a lifetime membership because I love it and I use it pretty much daily. Whenever I’m sitting on the subway, I will usually, if I’m not sort of meditating, trying to give my hands a rest from using the phone, play this. I’ll play this game. And it’s a game where you’re using language or math or something like that. It’s not a shoot em up kind of game anyway. Why am I talking about this? Well, every day there is a crossword puzzle and you can choose the hard version of the crossword, the medium version or the easy version. And I just realized a few days ago that this, particularly today I went, oh, so if you’re playing the hard version, you Get a hard version that describes, that gives the clue to the same word as the medium version and the easy version. And if you don’t get the hard version, you could just switch the medium version or the easy version and you get the easier clue. And I went, oh, I never realized that for some reason, I wasn’t thinking that the easy, medium and hard versions, the clues for those versions, would be towards the same word. And that got me thinking that there are a lot of ways to say that, right? To give the clue to the word echo, to give the clue to the word Lhasa, which is one of the other, which is a capital in near Tibet. Anyway, the reason I’m talking about it is because, well, think about it. If there are a lot of different ways to get to the same place to get to the same word, to give the clues to the same answer, which one do you want to give? If you’re giving clues to someone, if you’re communicating with someone, if you’re saying something to someone, how do you want to say it? Do you want to say it in a hedgy, scratchy way where they’ll go, I have no idea what you’re talking about, or do you perhaps want to say it in a way that they’ll go, oh, okay, I get it. And think about that. Why is that important? Why do we want to decide which way we’re going to communicate, which way we’re going to express ourselves? And then you have to decide, do you want to express yourself so that you can express yourself so that you can say what you want to say? Is that the more important thing? Or is it perhaps more important to express yourself to the person or people you’re talking with in a way that will be easiest for them to understand? That’s a really interesting question, isn’t it? Because there’s an ego thing involved, like there’s a sense of self thing involved here. How do I want to say it? Am I more interested in having my say the way I want to say it, or am I more interested in saying what I want to say so that the person I’m speaking with gets me? It’s different, isn’t it, when you think about it, when you think about it, how do you do that? What do you say to people when you’re trying to get a point across, when you’re trying to ask a question? And how much thought do you give to what you’re asking or saying? I have been accused many times of being the kind of person who it’ll take Me, like my friend Eric Kenning, the wonderful professional magician and good friend of mine, says, it takes me 35 minutes to clear my throat. That’s what he says about himself. I’m not telling tales out of school. He said that on this podcast because he used to be, once a month he was on here and he would do guest spots on Financials for Creatives, which if you don’t have those episodes or if you haven’t listened and you’re creative, and even if you’re not a creative, you know what I mean? Because I think everybody’s creative, but you should listen, check out those episodes. He’s got some really good things to say about your financials, as, especially if you’re an entrepreneur or a business owner or if you’re just interested in knowing more about how to, think about your finances, not, financial advice, all of that stuff. I have to say that the beginning of the episodes, but it’s stuff that s I’found very, very valuable to listen to and to sort of incorporate into my life.
I was recently in a workshop about the neuroscience of singing
But anyway, to get back to what I was saying, as is evidenced by what I’ve just done here, I’ve been accused of being roundabout in the way I ask my questions. And I was, just this weekend, by the time you hear this, it was a couple months ago probably, but just this weekend I was in a three day workshop about the neuroscience of singing and I’m going to do an entire episode about this taught by the excellent Andrew Byrne. He’s been on this podcast and if you’re at all interested in the neuroscience of the way our bodies work and interact with singing and other ways, listen to his episode. If you’re at all a singer and you’re interested in improving your singing, take his workshop. Not affiliated. Again, just had an amazing time and learned a lot. But, or and I should say so, in this workshop I was very involved and I was very blown away and I asked a lot of questions and there was one particular one I was asking about the way we form our vowels and how our tongue and mouth musculature develops. And I went, okay, so let me ask this because, you know, English is not my first language. So I grew up speaking a language. I formed speaking a language that’s very different than English pronunciation for things. And there are several vowels in Russian that don’t exist in English. And I went, okay, so I started asking this question about what you do as far as looking at the musculature and the development of mouths and tongues and lips et Cetera, et cetera. Jaws. If you’re talking to someone who’s an English speaker by birth, or a native speaker of another language, and what kind of differences should we expect to see? And I said this. I asked Andrew this, and during the break, and he went, oh, we should talk about this during class. Why don’t you ask the question again? And when I asked him originally, I kind of went around it a little bit, tried to make my point, and then in class, he said, is older, why don’t you ask the question, that you asked me earlier? And I went, okay, great. What I was wondering was, how do we work with clients who may not be native English speakers, who might therefore have developed speaking muscles that are different than we would expect from native English speakers or something like that? I asked it in one sentence, and after I asked it, I went, oh, I could have said all of the stuff I said to Andrew in one sentence, right? And that’s one of the things that I, As I think things through, I process out loud so often as I think, think through, and my husband will tell you it makes him nuts. I will talk and talk and talk and talk, and then I’ll finally get to my. It’s not that I finally get to my point. It’s more that I get to the realization of my point. So sometimes I go away and sit alone and process out loud. And then I went, ah. Then I’ll go, wow, this is the point. This is the thing that I was trying to get to. And then I’ll come back and go, this is what I was talking about. Why? Because Rich, after 33 years, and when we’ve been together 33 years now, he doesn’t always want to listen to my meanderings as I’m getting. As I’m figuring out my point, my idea, in real time. So I kind of walk away and go, okay, let me distill it down into what is actually salient to what I’m trying to say. And I don’t do it enough, I think, because I still frustrate him with my la, la la, la, la la. But I process out loud. And so one of the things that you can do for yourself is kind of decide, do I process out loud? Is that what I do? And if it is, you either need a person to speak with who is good with you doing that. My best friend, Kristen. Shout out to Kristen. She’s great with that. If I need to process out loud and just sort of think things through, she will listen to the Rainbow’s End. And I love Kristen, if you happened to listen to this ever, I love you for that. Not everybody is that patient, let’s face it. And so what I’m learning to do is to sort of go, I need to go think about this. And I will literally walk out onto the balcony of our apartment or go for a walk and kind of process out loud to myself and then I’ll come back and go, this is what I want to talk to you about. because it, it improves our communication and improves his frustration level. Being the ADHD boy that he is, he doesn’t do well with meandering unless he’s the one. Meandering. Yeah, I said it. I did. But anyway, this whole episode, this whole 13 some odd minutes that I’ve been talking with you is really my way of saying, hey, something for you to think about is what is the way that you want to communicate? Do you want to communicate in the most complicated way, the medium way or the easy way? And I don’t mean complicated is a bad thing. I am, as I said, I am the person who will go through the complicated process and try to express it. But what is most important? What is your goal? Is it to say it the way you want to say it or is it to say it so that the person you’re speaking with understands you? I really hope that you run, with that one. Okay. I hope that you enjoyed this little episode. Reminding you that I’ll be taking a break from June, probably June 1 through September 1, and go to iSoldtit.com blog to find all of the episodes. There are literally over 500 episodes that are sitting there waiting for you to listen on communication, creativity, tons of interviews with really great people. And it’s going to be a minute before I take this break because I have a whole bunch of episodes to that I’ve already pre recorded. But I, encourage you listen to some of the amazing people I’ve talked to, Paul Liberti, Tom Peters, some of the more recent people who I would love to have you speak with, speak with. I would love to have you listen to lots and lots of really great people and some of these solo episodes, if they’re helpful to you, please, please, please keep listening to those. Contact me if you have any questions. If you like the podcast, I would love it if you’d let me know. I’d love to hear from you if there’s something you want to know. If there’s an episode you particularly like or got something out of. I would love to hear from you about that. I will be giving you more and more stuff. There will be more theater coming at you, reviews, but also your creative table reads. I’m about to embark on some really fun writing projects and I might come back and just be, giving you some thoughts on the writing process and reading you a chapter here and there of the work that I’m currently working on. Lots of stuff planned. I just need to take a little time to get there.
Your Creative Mind podcast features Izolda Trakhtenberg
All right, this is Izolda Trakhtenberg for the your Creative Mind podcast, reminding you, as always, to be bold, be creative, and most of all, be kind. Thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate you being here. Please subscribe to the podcast if you’re new and it would mean the world to me if you told a friend about it. Today’s episode was produced by Izolda Trakhtenberg and is copyright 2025. As always, please remember this is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Past performance does not guarantee future results, although we can always hope.