Episode 128: What’s Beyond Your Creative Limits? Creative Currency, Blocks, and Why You Might Want to Burn Your Vision Board with Victoria Granof
Podcast
Episode 128: What’s Beyond Your Creative Limits? Creative Currency, Blocks, and Why You Might Want to Burn Your Vision Board with Victoria Granof
“What's beyond the limits of your own creativity and your own ability to manifest.” —Victoria Granof
This episode is your invitation to rethink everything you’ve been told about creativity, productivity, and what it actually means to be “in flow.” I’m joined by food creative, cookbook author, and creative force Victoria Granof, and we’re diving into the energetic, spiritual, and deeply human side of the creative process.
Victoria shares her perspective on creative currency, the idea that creativity is meant to move through you. Instead of chasing ideas or trying to “make it happen,” she invites us to become open conduits, allowing creativity to flow in from something greater. Victoria challenges manifestation, including why she is against vision boards (and why you might want to burn yours).
We talk about what it looks like to nourish creativity, from meditation and spiritual practices to hands-on creative experiments like watercolor, cooking, and making just one imperfect thing. Victoria tell us about “kicking a brick out” when you feel blocked, small, physical acts of creativity that shift your energy and open new channels.
We also explore the tension between structure and flow, perfectionism and play, and how stepping outside of productivity (yes, doing something just for fun) is often the exact thing that brings your best work back online. This episode is a reminder that creativity doesn’t need to be linear, polished, or profitable to be powerful.
Whether you’re feeling creatively blocked, questioning your process, or craving more freedom in how you create, this conversation will be the gentle nudge to finally sign up for the pottery class and perhaps, be more open, present in your own creative process.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or on your favorite podcast platform while you cook, clean, or create. Get the full show notes & transcript below.
Resources Mentioned:
A Course in Miracles here
Victoria’s Substack Delicious Tangents here
SubstackVictoria’s Creative Mentorship and Course here
Questions to Reflect On:
Sit with these questions: Journal, take them on a walk, create a voice note, chat with a friend, or sit with a cup of tea and reflect on them.
Leave a comment on Substack or connect with us on Instagram @chefcarlacontreras & @victoriagranof to share your takeaway from the episode.
1. What would it look like to approach my creativity as something that flows through me, not from me?
2. What is one small, imperfect creative act I can do today to “kick a brick out” and shift my energy?
3. Where am I attaching creativity to productivity or income and what happens if I let that go?
4. What am I currently saying “I don’t want to” to and how would it feel to shift into “I’m willing”?
5. When was the last time I created something purely for fun, with no expectation attached?
xo Carla
PS: Substack curious? Listen to the podcast episode about building your new digital home on Substack here.
Disclaimer: Always seek the counsel of a qualified medical practitioner or other healthcare provider for an individual consultation before making any significant changes to your health, lifestyle, or to answer questions about specific medical conditions. If you are driving or doing an activity that needs your attention, save the energy practice for later. This podcast is for entertainment and information purposes only. Note: Some of these are affiliate links. I receive a small percentage of the sales. I appreciate your support of my small Latinx & women owned business.
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Victoria Granof
Victoria Granof is one of the most influential and visionary food creatives of our time; a creative culinary force whose groundbreaking work has helped shaped the tastes and visual language of contemporary food culture. With a Grand Diplôme from Le Cordon Bleu and a visual arts degree from F.I.T., Granof has spent decades redefining how we see, experience, and connect with food through her lens. She is a James Beard award finalist and was named one of the 100 most inspiring women in food by Cherry Bombe magazine.
As the creative visionary behind some of the most iconic cookbooks and food campaigns of the past three decades, Granof has collaborated with an extraordinary roster of culinary luminaries. Her portfolio includes work with Irving Penn, Anthony Bourdain, Marcus Samuelsson, and Snoop Dogg; Nespresso, Haagen Dazs, ImpossibleFoods and Starbuck’s, among many others, helping to bring scores of food campaigns and cookbooks into the world that have not only garnered international acclaim but fundamentally changed how food stories are told. In addition, she is the author of four cookbooks, most recently “Sicily, my Sweet”, named a best cookbook of the year by the Los Angeles Times.
Beyond her individual achievements, Granof has established herself as a mentor and teacher, nurturing the next generation of creative talent. Many of the food creatives making their mark today trace their careers back to her guidance and influence. Her generosity in sharing knowledge and opening doors has created a ripple effect throughout the industry, with her proteges going on to have stellar careers of their own.
Find + Work With Victoria:
Full Transcript:
Victoria (01:10):
Well, thank you for that introduction. It's kind of like currency. When you talk about money and you call it currency, it's supposed to flow through our system. It's supposed to flow like a current. And when I'm being creative, you're in the flow. It just happens. It happens effortlessly. There almost is an energy of not being able to stop the flow. When you're really, really being creative, if you wanted to stop being creative, you couldn't. So I find that for me to nourish creativity, I have to always be in creativity. I have to be the creativity. It's hard for me to even put that one into words. But when I'm talking to you about this, I'm feeling like this, I'm kind of visualizing this sort of open conduit. And I really believe that creativity is not ours. It doesn't come from us. It comes through us.
(02:13)
Now, I hope people that are listening to this won't be turned off by the word God, or the universe or whatever you choose to call it. But even the word inspired breaks down to in spirit. And I feel when I'm most creative and when I'm allowing it to come through, I'm allowing it to come through me from a greater source. I'm not trying to make it happen. I'm trying to make it welcome. And there's a definite energy shift between making something happen and making something welcome. I mean, I even feel like when people do vision boards, I'm so against vision boards. And because all you're doing is you're putting pictures on a board of the limitations of your own creativity. You don't know what's beyond your own creativity, what's beyond the limits of your own creativity and your own ability to manifest. You're only saying, "Okay, I would put a little stone cottage on there." But that's the limits of my knowledge and that limits of my creative thinking there is the stone cottage.
(03:21)
I think that's the biggest and the best for me, but maybe it's not. Maybe it's not. Maybe the universe has more in store in a different way, in a different direction. And so I feel like the most successful nourishment of creativity is being open to it and not laboring to make it happen.
Carla (03:41):
Do you have any spiritual practices and/or ancient practices that you incorporate into either your day, your week, your life in order to nourish creativity into ... I want to use the word flourish into creativity.
Victoria (04:01):
Oh, that's so beautiful. I love that. Flower, flourish, blossom, bloom, new growth. Yeah. Well, the flourishing and the flowering and the blossoming is ... It's that whole process. Flowers don't just happen. It's a whole process. It's a whole team that comes together. It's the field lying fallow where it looks like nothing's really happening. So what's my practice? Well, it's definitely meditation. I've taken the cafeteria method to spirituality.
Carla (04:31):
Ooh, I want to know. Tell me.
Victoria (04:33):
I have my little tray and I take it down the line and I get a little bit from classic Judeo-Christian beliefs. Every morning, I wake up and thank God that I did wake up and that I'm able to show up for another day fully. Sometimes not so fully, to be honest with you. I have one practice that stays with me is science of mind. And it is the belief that ... It's mind, body, spirit being one and the belief that we are little sparks of divinity, having a human experience in a spiritual world. So I'm a spiritual being living in a human world. So it's hard to sometimes get there. Of course, in miracles, definitely. A little bit of Buddhism in there, the non-resistant path, the transcendental meditation, Oprah Super Soul Sundays. I mean, I feel like I'm sometimes to my detriment. I'm open to hearing truth, and that's not always pretty, but I'm open to hearing truth and I feel like I'm kind of very sensitive when I hear it and it sort of gets filed away and becomes part of my practice.
(05:52)
So it's not specifically from anywhere. It's just open channels receiving truth constantly.
Carla (06:00):
That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. Are there any ways that you ... And I want to say creative practices where there's physical action. Is there drawing? Is there painting? Is there any other ways that creativity moves through you?
Victoria (06:20):
Creativity begets creativity. So in fact, I think I was talking to you recently about my watercolor class. It's been a rather slow month. So I put my hands on whatever I can create, whether it is a fatous salad, which will be my lunch, or a mosaic blanket or sunprints. I love doing that. That is something I have sunprint paper, that blue paper. And sometimes when I'm having trouble feeling grateful or I'm stuck creatively, I will literally take a piece of that paper and go outside and there's always sun as long as there's daylight, even if it's not sunny. And I'll just take items that are right there in front of me and lay them on the paper and put them in the sun. And 10 minutes later, I've got kind of a different way of looking at natural creativity. And it's just sort of, I don't know, shifts something in me.
(07:25)
It sort of kicks a brick out. When I'm feeling stuck, I feel like it's just this brick structure that's so strong that nothing can penetrate it. And I physically, in my mind, it feels physical, but I take my foot and I kick a brick out and it just sort of makes the whole pile come down. I mean, that's definitely kicking a brick out. You'll hear me say that a lot. I've signed up for a watercolor class that I'm starting on Saturday. I'm thrilled. And if that doesn't work, then I'll do something else. I don't know, skydiving or whatever. Whatever unblocks a channel, and I don't mean to say because I haven't done any skydiving that I'm blocking that channel, but it isn't a channel that's ... It's not fertilized and plumbed and groomed. It's not a trail that's groomed. It's off pieced. I love that term, but that doesn't mean it's blocked.
(08:18)
It just means I haven't walked down that.
Carla (08:21):
After I got off the last podcast with you, I was like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do ceramics and it doesn't have to be perfect because that's also a thing that, for me, it's like, well, if I'm going to do something, it has to be perfect. It has to generate revenue. We need an Instagram. We possibly need a website. I mean, I go into this because I have this Virgo North node that's like, we have to have all our I's dotted Ts crossed and we're going to do this fully. And I'm like, "What if I did it for pleasure? What if I did it for
Victoria (08:58):
Fun?" Yes. And I mean, we give that to our children. What do you age out of it? Do we all of a sudden age out of it and say, "Okay, we can't give it to ourselves." But that's the thing with creativity. If you keep doing the same thing over and over and over again, one of the things that I love and I have always loved is styling ice cream. But if I didn't, I mean, can you imagine the drudgery of doing that same thing over and over and over and over and over again, but it's the time in between those ice cream jobs that I have to nourish myself with other things that allow me to come back to it repeatedly and repeatedly with joy and a new eye. So whether it's styling ice cream or ... I used to have hobbies and I would make one thing.
(09:53)
I would take a class in raku pottery and I would make one pot because that was the only thing I could get perfect. I took a class in pewter casting. I made one pewter fig with a leaf on it ever, just one thing and that was it. I don't remember why I went down this path just now of telling you about the one thing, but then I realized that doing that one thing was really just pulling a brick out of the pile. It was really just kind of breaking up what had been a kind of string of maybe not so fabulous assignments, and it kind of broke that up. And even though I just made one raku pot or one, that's enough. That's enough to give your creativity a little kick in the ass and move you into a different mindset, open up different channels of creativity.
Carla (10:47):
So for me, I'm thinking that this goes into course creation. And I realized, because I looked at it recently, I have 14 different courses that I created. Oh my God. I know. What if we do it for the sake of creativity? And you've inspired me so much to really lean into, okay, it's just another practice and it doesn't have to be perfect and it doesn't have to-
Victoria (11:10):
It's called a practice.
Carla (11:11):
Yeah. It's a practice. Let's underline that. It's a practice. And I love that you two, I think you mentioned on one of the podcasts we did together that sometimes you do box breathing.
Victoria (11:23):
Oh yeah. I mean, sometimes it's just stopping because I don't know about you, but I hold my breath and I don't know what I'm doing by holding my breath. I'm just keeping everything in or I don't know what I'm doing when I hold my breath, but I'm not actually holding my breath till I turn blue like an infant, but I don't breathe deeply when I'm blocked. That's exactly the energy of being unblocked is breathing deeply, is just like taking in and letting out and allowing those channels to free up. I know. Sometimes it's just box breathing. Yeah, I just did it the other day. My niece calls it square breathing. Anything to move me out of a place where I feel blocked. So it's all about energy movement. I think so much of it is, without sounding too airy fairy, so much of it is just moving energy and being aware of the energy of being blocked, being aware of how that feels.
(12:19)
For me, boredom is when I feel bored, it is the energy that I'm using to block creativity. That's what boredom feels like. And when I feel bored, I go, "Why am I blocking my creativity? How can I unblock it? Go take a walk, I don't know, drink some water, do some box breathing." I don't know. I was painting pots the other ... If you could see all the art projects, ridiculous things I have going on here, absolutely ridiculous, but necessary.
Carla (12:52):
I will say this because I work with clients. They have chosen X, Y, and Z. And I'm like, "Ooh, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. " And then I do all of the practices that we listed, like I breathe, I meditate, I go for a walk.
Victoria (13:09):
The whole energy of the word want is keeping you from receiving. So I want that job. I want that assignment. I want that refrigerator. I want that vacation. I want that anchoring, affirming want in your life. That's not moving you closer to receiving it. It's just keeping you in want. And whether you're saying, "I don't want, I do want. " Want is want. When you use the word want, that's where you are. That's where you stick yourself. So being willing sometimes is as good as I can do. Sometimes when I'm in that place where, "Oh God, I don't want to do this. I so don't want to do this. I am not looking forward to this. I so don't want to do this. This I don't want to do. " And then I go, "Oh God, okay." Just like what you said, although I think I'm going to start using your nomenclature when you said, "I'm willing to look at this a different way." I love that, but changing want to, I'm willing.
(14:19)
Sometimes it's just, you know what, I'm willing to go down the next road. I'm willing not to feel this way. I'm willing to look at it a different way, like you said. And I mean, we have to do what we have to do. There's no getting away from it. But if you keep saying the word want or don't want or the want, whether there's a negative or a positive is still want.
Carla (14:38):
I love that. And want and need. And I shared this before we hopped on about the course in miracles is I'm willing to see this differently, but I love this idea of I'm willing to see this differently in terms of creative projects, in terms of work, in terms of other areas. And I think that willingness is just such a sparkly way like, oh, we can have this glimpse of possibility.
Victoria (15:05):
Yes, that's exactly. And you know what? I want to just go back to something that you said a little while ago. We were talking about something and you said this brings up course creation in terms of creating a new course, a new path, course in the sense of a new path, because that's what we were really talking about, was unblocking the channels and traveling ungroomed trails. And then you said course creation, you were talking about the courses that you create, but you're talking about the literal online courses that you create. But in another sense, you were talking about creating a course that you could travel in the sense of like a course, like an Italian course, like a racetrack.
Carla (15:53):
You know what's interesting is that the two things are literally, I feel like the same for me, is that by giving myself permission to share whatever is creatively coming through me, it's creating a new pathway in my brain, it's creating a new pathway literally in my business. But sometimes those things literally become physical online courses where other people might get sparked creativity too.
Victoria (16:24):
I have a question for you.
Carla (16:25):
Yeah, I love it.
Victoria (16:26):
What's your theme song?
Carla (16:28):
I have a fellow friend that's a life coach. She asked me like, "What do I do creativity?" Sometimes it's like Stevie Nicks and it's like, "What would Stevie Nicks do? " And it's like almost like this flowy movement, like I'm listening to it. Sometimes it's that, but sometimes it's like I'm literally listening to Notorious B.I.G., One song on repeat. It's really like all the people that have told me that I can't do this. I am creating and forging my own path and no one gets to define that for me. And there is like this, yes, I'm a meditation teacher, I'm a Reiki practitioner. There is a lot of love and light, but there's also a lot of fuck you in there.
Victoria (17:17):
Yeah.
Carla (17:17):
I want to hear, what is your theme song? Do you have one or do you have many?
Victoria (17:21):
In my brain, they're just melodies that pop up when I'm doing something or when I'm not doing something. Anyway, one is the theme to Rocky. So I'm like. And then that sort of morphs into that Enio Morakone, Sergio Leone, like spaghetti Western music from the 50s, and then Three Blind Mice. I don't even know where that came from. That has been in my head for ages.
Carla (17:50):
There is a lot of this music, and I feel like that is also part of this creative process that, and I don't know about you when you are creating whether you're listening to music or not.
Victoria (18:03):
Both of mine have to do with running. When I think about it, the Rocky when he's running up the stairs and the Three Blind Mice, see how they run. Maybe I need to actually spend some time looking at that. Maybe that's not so healthy running, running, running.
Carla (18:19):
I'm in a journal about my whole FU energy. I think it's really interesting that I chose these certain songs and also like the softness and the flowiness of Stevie Knicks.
Victoria (18:31):
So wait, where's your sun and moon?
Carla (18:34):
My son is Aries and I'm a Sagittarius moon.
Victoria (18:39):
Well, so I've got Virgo Rising and Gemini Moon, but Pisces Sun and all my whole signature is Scorpio. So I've got a lot of water.
Carla (18:48):
I love it. And you're able to like move in and out of things.
Victoria (18:52):
Yeah, I am able to move in and out of things, but while still giving the impression that I'm all organized and I know exactly what I'm doing with that Virgo.
Carla (19:02):
How does that play into your creativity and does it?
Victoria (19:05):
My creative process may not look linear or organized to the outside world. And so I don't have to. It happens. It was a gift I was given by being born with a Virgo ascendant that I am able to walk into a situation and appear classically organized and all of that. Well, really creatively, my mind is probably going in five different directions and is not linear at all. And my thinking is very tangential, but it does connect in a way that maybe only I understand it. I'm very grateful for appearing casually to the outside world that I have everything together. The ability to portray a universal image of someone who classically has the situation well in hand. That makes sense.
Carla (19:59):
It makes total sense to me. Your creative process can look however you like. It doesn't have to be a certain way.
Victoria (20:09):
Yeah. Creative processes can be extremely messy. They don't have to be organized and they can be extremely tangential. And sometimes I'll ... I had a big breakup several years ago only because we were walking through Central Park together and I picked up this leaf. I said, "Is this the most gorgeous thing you've ever seen?" And he goes, "It's a leaf." And I went, "Oh my God, that's it. You will never see this, the world the way I see the world. To you, it's a leaf. To me, it's the most gorgeous." I mean, it was just this moment where it became crystal clear, wait a second. That is a different story. I love it. And then in the end, that leaf kind of sparked something in me that became part of a picture that I did, and it sort of lived on in a different way.
(20:58)
So you never know. Also, I think the last thing I want to say is I do not eat, drink, or talk on the phone or check my emails when I'm walking down the street because so much is happening and you miss it. And there's so much input that if you're eating or drinking or on the phone, you miss everything. That's my own little rule. Actually, I like taking walks with friends, but when I'm feeling open, really open creatively, I just like to do it myself because then you have to talk to a person. And if I'm talking to someone, I'm not able to take in what's around me.
Carla (21:45):
I adore talking to you. We'll put all of the information down and I'm just so grateful that you took the time to talk about creativity with me. I'm sending you so much love. Thank you so much.
Victoria (21:57):
Thank you. I'm sending it right back to you. Thank you.
Carla (22:00):
Thank you, Victoria. Bye everybody. Thanks so much for tuning in to Nourishing Creativity. You can find me chef Carla Contreras across all social media platforms and more information in today's show notes. While you have your phone out, please leave a review on iTunes or Spotify. This is how others find this show. I really appreciate your support, sending you and yours so much love.