If you’ve ever wondered, “Is it too late for me to...” the answer’s NO and The Uplifters are about to show you why. This space is for purpose-driven women who want to do big, brave things in the second half of their lives. I’m your host, Aransas Savas, and I’ve spent the last 20 years at the intersection of behavior change research and coaching.
This month for the new year, we're exploring new beginnings with award-winning author Sahar Delijani, Dawn Veselka who co-founded Cards2Warriors (sending over 48,000 cards of hope to people battling chronic illness), perimenopause expert Karissa Pfeffer, and today, comedian-filmmaker Mandy Fabian. Welcome to the Uplifters!
Listen to this episode if...
You’ve been putting off a creative project because you don’t feel ready yet
You’re expanding into something new and feeling simultaneously excited and terrified
You need permission to acknowledge your fears without letting them stop you
You’re tired of feeling like you should have it all figured out before you begin
You want to understand how successful creators avoid self-doubt (spoiler: they don’t)
Carla Zanoni sent me this illustration 👆 from Mari Andrew just as I was sitting down to tell you about my conversation with Mandy Fabian on The Uplifters Podcast. I always thought (hoped) the Giant Iceberg of Creative Fear would get smaller over time. Turns out that’s not the case. If anything, it gets bigger.
Because the more we create, the more we know what can go wrong. The more we put ourselves out there, the more aware we become of all the ways we might fail. The more we risk, the more we have to lose. It’s like Mandy says in today’s conversation: “When you start to expand, it can feel like you’re smaller because the space around you gets bigger to make space for everything that you’ve got to give.”
Now, if I could draw like Mari, I’d sketch a picture of myself in a disorientingly large room wearing a bear skin with my legs and arms stretched wide, opening my mouth wide and filling it with my great big voice. (No, I haven’t become a furry. Yes, it’ll make sense when you hear the episode.)
Mandy has been making the choice to step into the bigger space over and over again throughout her creative life. As a comedian, filmmaker, and singer-songwriter, she’s built a career on saying yes to projects that scare her, projects where she’s not entirely sure she knows what she’s doing.
Her latest film, Just Plus None (streaming now on Apple TV and Amazon Prime), is a romantic comedy with a twist: the protagonist doesn’t end up with anyone. Instead, she ends up with herself. It’s a film about a woman who’s messy and flawed and doesn’t know how to be a maid of honor, who has loud, unashamed sexual desires, who makes mistakes and learns to love herself where she is. It’s the kind of film that challenges what we think women in rom-coms should be like (and what we think our own journeys toward self-acceptance should look like).
Creating it required Mandy to wrestle with the same noisy fears we all do, but courage alone doesn't write the script, find the funding, or push through the three weeks of intense therapy required at the start of the project. So in this episode, we talk about her actual practices for managing fear, the specific ways she processes doubt, and how she's learned to hear limiting beliefs differently (not as truth, but as challenges that prove she needs to be in the room).
Her Courage Practice
Mandy has developed what might be my favorite courage practice I’ve heard on this show: the therapeutic tantrum.
Here’s how it works: When fear and doubt and anxiety are overwhelming, she doesn’t try to positive-think her way through it. Instead, she gives herself permission to throw a full-blown tantrum, either on a friend’s voicemail (with permission to delete without listening) or in her journal or just out loud to herself.
She lets herself be “the most scaredy cat, petty, mean-spirited towards myself and anybody else.” She argues for all her limitations. She whines and stomps her feet and declares how unfair everything is and how nobody ever helps her and how she’s going to fail and everyone will laugh.
And then she lets it pass.
“I let that do for as long as I have to, so that it has its moment,” she explains. “And usually then I go, okay, that’s that. Now let’s work on the other part of it.”
What Mandy understands is something most of us resist: those feelings need to be expressed, not suppressed. When we try to bypass them or pretend they don’t exist, they don’t go away. They just turn into a toxic filter that colors everything we see. But when we give them a neutral space to exist, acknowledge them fully, and let them run their course, they lose their power.
It’s like she’s created a wind phone for her fears ((H/T Lia Buffa De Feo ), a safe place to release them so they don’t poison her creative process. And then, once the tantrum has run its course, she can ask a different question: “Okay, fun. Would you like to have a word? What would you like to see happen today?”
Editor’s note: Sahar Delijani described a very similar practice on last week’s episode, in case you need more evidence in order to let those cranky, negative feelings rip.
3 More Ways Mandy Fabian Shows Us How to Build Our Courage Capital:
She moves forward before she feels ready — Mandy admits she often starts projects because she’s “too stupid to believe it could ever go wrong,” driven by dreams rather than detailed plans. But once reality sets in and fear shows up, she doesn’t quit. She just acknowledges that bravery now means something different. It means continuing even after you know how hard it’s going to be. (This is the real courage, by the way: not the ignorant bliss of starting, but the clear-eyed determination to keep going.)
She keeps “we could” possibilities alive — When Mandy and her husband realized they could move to Paris (even though they weren’t going to), it reminded her that she was free to choose her path, and that those little desires probably held clues to what she was craving in her current reality.
She anchors in present-moment acceptance — “The point is to have you right here accepting what is,” Mandy says about why she practices presence. “That’s where you’re at your best self.” Rather than ruminating on past mistakes or catastrophizing about future failures, she brings herself back to now: What can I do today? What small step can I take? What would make this moment easier? It’s a practice that cuts through the overwhelm and reconnects her to her power.
Lift Her Up
Watch Mandy’s film Just Plus None on Amazon Prime and Apple TV. If it resonates with you (and I think it will), take two minutes to rate and review it. This is how films by independent female creators find their audiences. Your review could be exactly what another viewer needs to discover this gem.
If you loved this story...
Start with Kara Cutruzzula’s episode about building a multifaceted creative career, then explore conversations with other women who’ve chosen creative courage: Caroline Scruggs on leaving the music industry to create freedom, Cleyvis Natera on leaving corporate to write full-time, and Julie Hartigan on pivoting from engineering to becoming a chef.
Let’s chat about this episode!
What creative dream have you been treating like it needs perfect conditions before you can begin? Share in the comments what your next brave creative step might be.
