How to be a creative thinker
Hello, listeners, members and subscribers! Our eighteenth Moonshots Master episode has arrived with a creative flavour.
Creative thinking is the process of generating new and original ideas or concepts. It involves imagination and curiosity to develop novel solutions to problems or challenges. Creative thinking can be applied to many fields, including business, art, science, and more.
There are several key characteristics of creative thinking:
It involves going beyond the obvious and finding new perspectives.
It requires an open and flexible mindset.
It involves generating many ideas and then refining and selecting the best ones.
It involves making connections between seemingly unrelated ideas or concepts.
It involves taking risks and being willing to try new things.
In this master series, we start with John Cleese and Elizabeth Gilbert, who reminds us that creativity is a lifestyle we can adopt.
We then into some specific breakdowns to better understand creativity and flow with Steven Kotler and Michael Bingay-Stainer.
Youtuber Valorian and Elizabeth Gilbert round out the investigation with practical suggestions on being creative and original.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello, and welcome to the Moonshots Master Series. It's episode 18. I'm your cohost, Mike Parsons, and as always, I'm joined by Mark Pearson. Freeland. Good morning, Mike. Good morning.
Mike and good morning, Master Series members and subscribers. We're so glad to be, bring. A brand new topic as part of episode 18, aren't we, Mike?
We are bringing something new that will hopefully get those creative juices flowing.
I think you've given it away already, Mike, but that's right. Members, we are digging into the idea, the mystery, perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel, which is the concept of creativity.
Creativity from any part of your life, I think, is where we are making the case today—the idea of. You're leaning towards something that you've never done before, or perhaps it was an idea you've got in the back of your mind since day one. Maybe, it was a career that you previously had, and then you put down the pencil for a little bit, and now you're thinking about going out and maybe being a little more creative today.'
I think Mike, we've got a pretty action-packed and inspirational show orientated around how all of us can be a little more creative in our lives.
Yeah. And I think that sometimes we all are victims of thinking Job or Jane they're creative, and I don't have that within me.
I think we will dispel that kind of self-doubt, fear. We're going to show you, our members and subscribers, that you all have infinite creative power inside of you. So you have to do a bunch of things to get that. And we're going to have some fantastic clips from the likes of Elizabeth Gilbert, John Cleon many more.
And hopefully, you'll get a little bit of inspired inspiration. You'll have a few aha moments. But importantly, we also want you to have a deeper understanding of creativity and an actual go-to playbook for what you can do, steps you can take in your day straight after this podcast to be more creative, and use your imagination. Whatever your creative gift is, that you can find it, that you can enjoy it, you can celebrate it and share it with others.
That Mark sounds like a master series in creativity, doesn't it? It doesn't, Mike. We've done the likes of managing people, entrepreneurship habits and collaboration, mental models around communication, and even finding your purpose. But this show, I think, belongs in this master series library.
But you're right, Mike. We've got a range of fantastic individuals, clips, and speakers today. So I'm excited to dig in.
All right, so I think we've set it up. I think, importantly, remember, this is a master series for members and subscribers only. So make sure you head to moonshots.io, get the show notes so you can follow along, get the books, the inspiration, the charts, the links, and everything you need to take this idea of creativity, and bring into yourself and practice it.
So head over to moonshots ao. With that, you have our wisdom, the wisdom of all the stunning people. You have your show notes; you are ready to go. Mark, how would we want to open up this world of creativity?
Look, Mike, similar to some of the insights you shared just then. A lot of the time, people get maybe a little bit put off.
So we are going to open today's master series episode with an individual and author that we've referenced many times on the Moonshot's Weekly Show, and that's Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote a great book called Big Magic Creative Living Beyond Fear. So let's hear straight away kicking us off and getting us inspired for today's episode with Elizabeth Gilbert on why fear shouldn't stop you from Creating.
What was the big magic that inspired considerable charm? What
inspired you to make this? Wow, you know what it is? It's a response to years of being out in public, talking to people who tell me about the projects they want to be making and are not making the things they want to be doing and are not doing. And often, when I'm in public, I meet people making and doing really cool things, and they want to tell me about it.
But mostly, it's people who aren't. And when they come to me with their problems about creativity or their struggles with creativity, because they know I love to talk about creativity, I find that they always have some very rational, reasonable material. The real-world reason why they're not doing it.
But when you scratch away at that, what's underneath it is always and only fear. Yes. Always and only fear. I don't care what. The excuses or the rationalization or the justification for why they're not doing the thing that's calling to them.
Yeah. At the bottom of it, they're afraid. They're afraid. They don't have the talent. They're worried they don't have the right; they're so scared it's already been done better. They're worried they'll be rejected,, insulted, criticised, or ignored. They're afraid. There's no point. There's afraid. They have these like tumbling piles of fear, and I see it so much, and I hear the same questions again and again that I finally just thought, let's officially talk about this.
Yes. Let's break this down and figure out how people can live more creatively without being so scared. Oh, Matt, this is not only great thinking and questions about creativity, to zoom out a little bit. Surely fear and self-doubt are not only the enemy of creativity.
I would propose to you, Mark, what we've learned in the master series. It is the enemy of being at our best. We talk so much about being the best version of yourself. Indeed it is fear and self-doubt like it is for being creative. Being the best in all facets of your life is the fear or the self-doubt, and pushing through that defines success.
I think we all feel self-doubt. It's those that can push through it. We all feel hardship and uncertainty, but it's those that push through and like that with creativity. If we give into thought, oh, I'm not that creative; I could never do that. If we entertain those thoughts, we will not explore our creative potential.
And I love that Elizabeth Gilbert, and this is not the only time we're going to hear from her on this master series; she's challenging. That question she's asking the question of how we unlock it and how we overcome that fear—what a cracking start to a creativity master series.
Mark Yeah, I, I couldn't agree more, Mike. I think the call-out Elizabeth gave us was there to inspire us for today's show. If these individuals, or you and I, any of our members, if you are afraid that you don't have the right to give it a go and to try, That's going to be the blocker for anybody.Whether you are Elon Musk trying to build SpaceX and get to the moon and people saying, no, he can't do it.
Or I am being afraid of failure and what other people think of you. I remember Mark Manson and the subtle satellite of not giving an as well as individuals. Jordan Peterson. The idea of comparing yourself to others, I think, is a theme that we'll probably run into a couple of times in today's master series on creativity.
But I, Mike, I'm even thinking Brene Brown, Brene Brown calling us into the arena. Oh, yeah. To enter it and not only have an opinion but, more importantly, for today, to give it a go. Because you never know how you're going to respond. You might excel in the situation, or you might learn something valuable for another part of your life, another part of your creative experience. Still, you're never going to learn or go any further without giving it a go.
And I love this idea that Elizabeth Gilbert calls us out and says, let's talk about it.
Something else we should talk about. And one of the few times it is worth comparing yourself with others is if you. Altogether, members and subscribers to the Moonshot's Master Series and Ma, I think this is an excellent moment to celebrate those learning out loud with us and today looking to tap into some creativity.
So, Matt, I hand you the bat and a hat tip. Let's do a roll call of our yes. Patreon members. Roll call. Let me dust off. It's not a dusty trumpet mic with the shows we're pumping out. Let me fine-tune that. Trumpets are ready to call out our Patreon members.
Please Welcome; as always, Bob, John Terry, Ken Dimar, Byron Marj and Connor and Yasmine are 12-month plus subscribers and members. Those are their golden oldies, aren't they? Mark? They are. But there's nothing old about them because those individuals are our growth mindset officials, aren't they? But close on those heels.
And the other individuals who want to expand their knowledge of creativity and learn out loud with us include Lisa, Sid, Mr. Bonder and Paul Berg, cowman, David, Joe and Crystal. Ivo Christian, hurricane Brain, Sam Kelly, Barbara and Andre, Matthew, Eric, Abby, Chris, Debra Lase, Craig and Daniel. Andrew Rav, eVet, Nico, Ola, Ingram. Sarah, Dirk, Emily, Harry, and our brand new members with Karthik. Ve Kata. Veara Marco. And Brand New Brand. Brand new is SunDash. Welcome, and thank you for joining us, SunDash, on learning out loud.
We are very grateful indeed for your support. Thank you. It makes it possible for us to pay the bills, and those bills get bigger.
The more people that seem to listen to the bills, the hosting bills, in particular, do, get bigger. So we thank you for your support. It's appreciated. And we couldn't be making this particular show. But we are not finished with this show, mark. We have more to give in this world of creativity, don't we?
Yeah, that's right, Mike. I think we've made the case around, or at least we're beginning to make the case around, this idea of entering that arena, giving it a go. Understanding that fear shouldn't be the thing that keeps us from trying something new—maybe trying something creative.
So talking about creativity, let's hear from one of the masters of creation and creativity, Mr John Kle, who's going to break down for us now and make the case that creativity is a way of operating. When,
Video arts asked. When video arts asked me if I'd like to talk about creativity, I said, no problem.
Because telling people how to be creative is easy. It's only it that's difficult. And I knew it would be particularly easy for me because I spent the last 25 years watching how various creative people produce their stuff and being fascinated to see if I could figure out what makes folk, including me, more creative.
What is more? A couple of years ago, I got very excited because a friend of mine who runs the psychology department at Sussex University, Brian Bates, showed me some research on creativity done at Berkeley. It was done in the seventies by a brilliant psychologist called Donald McKinnon, which seemed to confirm in the most impressively scientific way all the vague observations and intuitions I'd had over the years. Creativity is not a talent.
It is not a talent. It is a way of operating. When I say a way of operating, what I mean is this. Creativity is not an ability that you either have or do not have. It is, for example, absolutely unrelated to IQ. Because to sum up something, I sometimes take three hours to say all creativity comes from the unconscious.
If creativity came from logic and intelligence, then all logical people could do it, but they can't. It all boils down to getting into a playful and relaxed mind. Most of it's to do with relaxation because unless you're relaxed, you can't. Hear the promptings from the unconscious. Nobody ever had a bright idea when they were attacking a machine gun nest; Do You see what I mean? If you are occupied with an activity, one of the reasons there's so little creativity at the moment, is that nobody gets any peace anymore. So these damn things are ringing all the time and beep there. So you sit down, there's another email coming.
It's poisonous because interruptions and anxiety will kill any creativity. So you have to get in an atmosphere where you're a little bit, you've got a little cocoon of your own, you close your door, or you go and sit in the park, and you stay quiet, and for the 20 minutes, nothing happens because you can only think of the things you ought to be doing.
People, you've forgotten to telephone, so you have to have a little notebook. You write those down. Then after 20 minutes, the mind starts to calm down, just as it does in meditation. It's an almost identical process. And then when you start thinking about the subject, not too hard, you don't want to get tense, you play with the thought, and you get little ideas.
Stop popping up. But if your mind is full of you, you'll never hear those little ideas. It'll be drowned out. Do you see what I mean?
What a fascinating combination of clips where, if effectively, we had an invitation from Elizabeth Gilbert that we all have equal rights and potential in creativity. And then I think, it's so fascinating to hear John CLEs, this storied comedian who's been successful over many decades, saying this is like a lifestyle.
It's a way of being and chilling out, building that cocoon, calming down and letting the subconscious play. So yeah, I think that's a great invitation. And to be clear, he said, hey, nobody had creative ideas charging that the sniper's nest; what did he call it? What was the machine gun Nest, right?
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Nobody's y in, experiencing creative aha moments. They're in fear of battle, and I think that is true. If our working style is too frenetic, too hectic, and we don't create that zen-like state that he talked about, then there's very little chance of creativity coming up from within.
Yeah, I like that clip a lot from John Kle for two reasons. First, I think John is making, or Mr Kle, as I should probably call him. He Les is making the case similarly to Elizabeth Gilbert in inviting us. Into this space. It is not necessarily a talent, as he says. Therefore, it's not an exclusive club that perhaps has made us afraid to enter it in the past.
Doesn't it? Is it not reserved for the royalties of com of creativity? Doesn't it remind you to take a little bit of a jump here? Einstein said he focused on fewer things for a longer time than everybody else. And that was his real belief of why he created so many breakthroughs. He only focused on a few things and spent a vast amount of his day just thinking about them and working on them.
Yeah, whereas everybody else was less focused.
Quote from Einstein; it's not that I'm so smart; I stay with problems longer. This idea of getting in the flow, as John Kle was saying, keeps it playful, reducing distractions. I'm hearing John; I hear Cal Newport with digital minimalism and a world without email coming through here as well, Mike; it's the idea of preserving your mindset.
Whether it's creativity from John k Cleese's angle, which is writing, or creativity at work in any job, whether it's podcasting, medicine, or whatever it might be. The point is you've got to allow yourself and enable yourself to get into that mindset, that flow if you will.
Yeah. To then be able to work on the problem, but also work on yourself, I would say.
So let's chat a little bit about some of the things we try in our working days to bring more creativity to throw a few quick ones here. I certainly tried to work on things for a more extended period.
In so much as something I've mentioned on the show before is if I'm if I have to write or deliver, A really big product playbook. I'll start on the outline two weeks before. If I have to give a big talk, I'll start at least two or three weeks before, giving me the time to think and refine. Sometimes I'll be out having a jog, and ideas will come to me.
And I do that because I never feel as satisfied with the work when I'm doing it the night before, and you have no time to stew on it to ponder it; you're like, I'm on such a deadline, I've got to crank it out. And invariably, you haven't had a chance to share the end product, get some feedback.
You haven't had a chance just to let it settle with you. You rush it out the door, and it's less satisfying. Yeah, I agree. That's certainly one of the habits that I have, or some of the techniques that I have, preparation, putting it down on paper, maybe at least sleeping on it, if not longer.
To improve it and allow my brain to percolate on the problem. Mike, what I also try and do is, and we've spoken about this on the show before as well, is try and keep my brain. So clear. And this is something that we mainly ran into with, I think, Mike; I'm testing my memory now.
I think it was John, duh. Oh no. David Allen. The idea of the brain is a pretty, poor computer, Correct? Getting things done. Yeah. He was like, yeah, put it all in, in a nice list somewhere. So you don't have to try and recall it, but it is; it's like what you are talking about. It's in terms of our lifestyle, as John Cleese was talking about, are you need to create space for creativity, whether it's deep work or exercise. I think if there was anything to take away from that, you are hampering your creativity if you are in a frenetic, hectic, last minute kind of working style. So that's why things like scheduling deep work, working on things a long way out, and remembering that whatever you dream of doing as a creative craft or pursuit, Elizabeth Gilbert is telling us, Hey, it's yours. That's unique, that's worthy. Get after it.
So if you're on the fence about pursuing a dream, maybe an. Be it music. Maybe you have something that calls your imagination and gets you excited. Hopefully, we're broken through, and you know that you can pursue it and that you have to build that lifestyle. I think that's a great start to the Creativity Master series mark, but now we need to turn our minds to going deeper in understanding now that you've made that time on the agenda.
To be creative, not just once, but over some time, maybe a week or a month. There are some great lessons we can learn from some absolute moonshot favourites. Mark, come on, set us up. Let's go deep into creativity now. That's right. I'm excited about this part too, Mike, and I can tell you are, so if you are thinking about how you can structure your mourning, you've cleared the diary, you've itemized what you're going to do today, and maybe you've turned on do not disturb mode.
You want to start getting into the job. So let's now hear from Stephen Kotler, who's breaking down some of the science of a moonshot's favourite Mihai cheek, semi-Mihai, and the idea of understanding flow cycles.
The flow genome project. What we've discovered is that when people want more flow in their lives, the number one thing we can tell them is that there is a flow cycle.
So the old idea about flow was that it was a binary, like a light switch. You were in the zone, or you were out of the zone. So we now know that flow is a four-part cycle, and you have to move through all four parts of the cycle before you can return to the flow state itself.
The neurobiology of the flow cycle and the actual research came from Herb Benson's work at Harvard. He laid the foundation for it, but we've discovered that at the front end of the flow state, there's a struggle phase. This is a loading phase. You are loading and then overloading the brain with information. For a baseball player, this is learning to swing a bat at a ball for a writer.
You are planning a new book. This is when you're doing interviews. This is when you're reading; it's when you're diagramming structure and things like that. It's very unpleasant, as a general rule. So even though flow may be the most desirable and pleasant state on earth, the actual flow cycle itself starts with a very unpleasant state known as a struggle from the struggle.
You move into a release, which means you want to take your mind off the problem. So what happens in flow? Are we trading conscious processing, which is slow and has very limited ram? The working memory can only hold about four items at once, and it's very energy inefficient for subconscious processing, which is extremely fast.
It's very energy efficient and has pretty much endless ram. So to do that, you have to move from the struggle. It would help if you stopped thinking about what you were trying to think about. You take your mind off the problem; you go for long walks. Gardening works very well. Building models work very well.
Albert Einstein famously used to row a boat into the middle of Lake Geneve and stare at the clouds, right? Once you can take your mind off the problem. And then, one of the only things you can't do to move through release is watch television. It changes your brain waves in a way that will block flow.
But once you move from release, There's a, actually underneath the surface neurobiologically, there's a global release of nitric oxide, which is a gas signalling molecule. It's found everywhere in the body. This flushes all these stress hormones out of your system and replaces them with a feeling-good performance, enhancing neurochemicals like dopamine and amide and serotonin and endorphins, which underpin the flow state.
You're in the flow state itself. This is the third stage in the struggle and on the back end of the flow state. So there is a recovery phase, and this is critical. So you go from this amazing high of flow to a very deep low that shows up in recovery. A lot of this is that all those feel-good neural chemicals have drained out of your system.
It takes certain vitamins, minerals, sunlight, and things like that to rebuild them. So the recovery phase on the back end of the flow state is also very unpleasant. And if you want to hack flow, you need to learn how to struggle better, and you need how to learn how to recover better.
And one of the most important things in recovery is that you have to; you need some emotional fortitude and grit. So you have to hold onto your emotions and not get stressed out that you no longer feel like Superman. And the main reason what two reasons for this are that if you get too stressed out at feeling low, you're going to start producing cortisol.
A little bit is fine. Too much of it blocks the accelerated learning that comes with the flow. So you'll get the short-term benefit of the flow state itself, but you won't get the long-term benefit, the accelerated learning that you get in the flow. The other problem is if you have to move from recovery back into struggle and you're bummed out at no longer being in flow during the recovery phase, it's very hard to get up for the difficult fight of struggle that follows.
Ooh. I believe we have successfully gone deep into the world of creativity, where we feel it flowing inside us. Struggle, release, flow, and recovery. It's interesting. How you cannot, if you listen to Kotler and Cleese, you can't flick that switch and say, oh, I'm going to be creative between 10 36 and 1137.
It doesn't work like that. It's building a more comprehensive cycle of struggle, release flow, and recovery. It's a; I think a lot of this in practically getting this done is also about allocating the time. It is prioritizing the time. For example, if we are working on something and want to bring our imagination to the fore, write on it for an hour or two, read on it for an hour or two, and then take a walk.
Just take a walk, listen to some really lovely music, and give yourself a break. Let the brain get through that cycle because we cannot flick an on-off switch. It's a bit like with athletes; it's those that practice harder. Over a long period become so great because they have done the body of work.
I believe that creativity is the same. Constantly giving that time in your calendar so that you can naturalize and nurture that creativity from within. And what an interesting cycle struggle, release, flow, recovery. How do you see that coming up in your life, mark and in your work?
I think for me, and exactly building on what you've just said hearing from CLEs at the beginning, it leads us into this concept that it is not reserved for a select few.
And it's not that a famous author that we might admire or an artist will wake up and have to write a brand new song instead; it's. But, as we hear on the Moonshot Show, creativity, achievement, and success are for those who work hard and prioritize time. So for me, Mike, honestly, sometimes it's a struggle to get out of that first phase, which is a struggle.
With my creative pursuits, I know there are often uncomfortable times, and just knowing that's part of the process is quite helpful. So, yeah, it is understanding. And that's why I think Mihai Chia Mihai and the idea of flow and the breakdown of the cycles of flow are reassuring.
It is not something that you might find you can instantly get into. You are not going to time block, as Cal Newport would say, which is something I use every day. I can't say that at 10 30 every day; I'm going to enter flow Instead. It'll be something that I will work towards. It's going to be a mixture, and what I do daily is I'll set up my day by preparing my priorities.
One of the things I have to get done today is the things that cannot wait another day. I'll then try and disregard or deprioritize whatever items I can and try and remove that from the bandwidth of my brain and try and. Then, allow me to enter the struggle phase that is reserved just for the key priorities of that potential day.
Once I've got through that, once I've been able to sit in front of the computer or a pad of paper, whatever it might be, and reserve that time as well as that bandwidth of my brain, remove those anxieties of other topics that I might have and try and just get into that flow sometimes. For me, it works great to do a little bit of exercise first because it gets the blood pumping.
It removes any anxiety that I might have about getting my energy levels up. And also, if I've done that exercise after perhaps making my priority list for the day, my brain can slowly calm down, like how I might get ready for bed in the evening before actually getting into a state of flow and working hard.
My brain needs to decompress as though I'm going to bed, and then I can start perhaps being focused on the topic at hand. What about you, Mike? How's your flow cycle?
Yes, I am because I'm at least aware of the time factor. Meaning that I allocate time in my diary for using my imagination stumbling through this struggle, release flow and recovery cycle.
I would say that what I am, I'm allocating the time. I'm less clear on where I am on struggle, release, flow and recovery. I think it's a bit intuitive, particularly with my music. It's quite intuitive. The time thing is the, is one big structure. So I could incorporate a little bit more thinking and reflection on where I am in those loops.
Because when I look at it, the struggle is the overload. You're trying to wrap your head around something. Then the release, I think, is just coming to terms with the creative process and what it's giving you back. And once you have that, then you go into the flow.
Like you just lose yourself in the work time disappears. And I think, for example, when I make music sets and albums, then I need downtime because it builds up, and I finally produce the work. So I publish the work, and then I need a few weeks off. So what's interesting is I have in my diary today to return to my music for the first time in two weeks because I released something two weeks ago.
So I've needed two weeks before I'm like itching to get back into the studio. Isn't that interesting?
Yeah, that is, and it takes a little bit of reflection to, because everybody's different, aren't they? So yeah. It takes reflection and the ability to give it a go again, which is the big call out here, isn't it, of this master series episode.
It's the idea of getting that Focus in mind to get into the frame of creation and the frame of being able to focus on something. Maybe it takes two weeks, maybe even longer for some people. So the point is that it is unique to each of us.
Yeah. And I just haven't devoted nearly enough time, as Kotler gave us that four-step cycle; I'm like, geez, I make the time, but I really.
I truly understand when and where I am in each of those. It's a very intuitive thing. However, imagine if I was more aware of it, if it was clearer to me, I think I would be able to enjoy it more frequently. So I think you're right, and most of us probably have not thought about it.
Do you know how we've talked much about wisdom and happiness? Are muscles you need to work on, like going to the gym? I think it's like, again, with creativity, I'm like, oh my gosh, there's work to do here; it's a bit daunting, isn't it?
It can be, and you're right. I think similarly to what we learned from the Dar lama in that show, happiness is a muscle that you can work on.
Yeah, and I think you're quiet. Making the case that creativity is also a muscle we can work on ourselves. Unfortunately, Mike and members, we've got a great clip coming up next from Michael Bunge, Stan, who's talking to Brian from Optimize, one of our go-to favourites on the Moonshot Show. And they're going to talk to us about the three essential things that all of us can start to adopt and try to work into our ideas around flow and being creative.
So let's hear now from Michael and Brian's breakdown focus. Courage and resilience. Please tell me how you define courage and why you think it's such an important part of this process of discovering our great work. Yeah, these are great questions, Brian. Thank you. So I say, to do great work, you need three parts, three characteristics.
You need Focus. If you've talked about it, focus on who I am and where the opportunities are. We need courage, and we need resilience, Focus, courage, and resilience focus that seeks to understand your great work and where the opportunities might be. Courage is the willingness to take the first step, the next step, and then the next step.
Because sign to do great work starts to challenge your regular life, your regular sense of yourself, and your relationships with other people. Sign to do great work will inevitably. Along with all the good times, those moments of being in flow and feeling like you're committed to something brilliant.
It will also create resilience, resistance and disappointment in other people. And when I go like this, you can tell when you're doing good work because everybody's happy. If you're doing great work somewhere, someone is a little disappointed, a little pissed, a little upset, a little let down because what you've done is you've said, I'm saying yes to this. And if I'm truly saying yes to this, if it's a strong yes, I must say no to this. And so many of us hedge our bets. So I'm going to say yes to this kind of, so I can keep saying yes to as many other things as possible.
Because I don't really want to let anybody down. Part of this is, damn it; I'm just going to say yes. I'm going to have the courage to understand the implications of that.
And say no as a byproduct, have the courage not to ask you to say no, because I have that deeper. Yes, exactly.
Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly right. And yeah. And that takes a certain amount of bravery. Yep. You people have heard me talk about my mastermind group, and in fact, I've got two, one here in Toronto and one that meets differently, scattered around the West coast. And quite frankly, one of the key components for all of us in these mastermind groups is less Focus.
Because we must know what we're working on and what's important. But it's courage and resilient courage to be bold about taking the step resilience. Because we all get to these points where we're like, I give up, it's too hard.
I'm going to bounce back, and I'm going to go; I can keep going. Yeah. But one of the ways you keep going, one of the ways you build resilience, is through your relationships, I think. , you talk about your relationships a lot and the importance of your wife, your child, and your life.
And I think one of the things that build resilience is having those nourishing relationships. And I could say the same about my wife. She is; part of the reason I keep going is that she hugs me when I need to be hugged, and she kicks my ass when I need to be kicked.
All good. I never knew that there was so much hugging and kissing involved in creativity.
I think there isn't there? Look, I think if you wanted to get three words that have stood out in the years we've been making shows together, mark, studying success, habits of people, Focus, courage, resilience. In that. I see Cal Newport, Ryan Holiday, Brene Brown, Michelle, Obama, and so many more.
What defines your ability to do great work? Are those three things? What? Really helps you be the best version of yourself when you dare to shoot to the moon. Focus, courage, resilience. Oh my God. Big mantra. But I actually, I wanna explore something that he spoke about there, which was saying yes and no, and this is a theme that the great Steve Jobs spoke about. The art of building a great product is what you don't put in the art of being successful at one thing is declining the invitation to the other things.
Now, this is a kind of nuance, but I believe it's something we should talk about because with us all being so accessible through our iPhones 24 hours a day to family, friends, and colleagues, the invitations or the requests or the petitioning is. Sorelenting. I had to text a family member yesterday just saying, " Hey, things are super hectic right now
I'll come back to your request at the weekend. Just because I can't tackle that. And it's really interesting. I think that's something that we all experience regularly. Ugh, how am I going to tackle that? And so we're always in a competition for our attention, for our time.
And as a result, what we can do is take control of what we prioritize and what we don't. I would even build on this. Mark, one last thought before you hit me with it is that even Warren Buffet does the same thing he says; I know. The businesses I know and I invest in them. And if I don't understand the business, I don't invest, no matter how much it costs; if I don't understand the business, I don't invest.
If it is not your priority, if it is not your creative calling, if it is not something you have deliberately said, I want to put my imagination towards this. The challenge is that you need to say no. And that's what we're learning from B. He's like saying yes is saying no to other things as well. What do you think?
I think it's huge. I think what's interesting is being able to connect the idea, the concept, and the mystery of being creative to something acceptable like this. And I think where Bongo stand is leading us here with those three big words. And like you say, Mike, these are moonshot's mantras almost.
The idea of this resilience to say no is an invitation and a call out that, maybe, we've heard from Brene Brown John Duh, with Measure What Matters and Christina Woody with radical Focus. I appreciate that those are productivity, but I still think that there's a connection here, which is permitting yourself to create space and the control and empowerment of having a good set.
Priorities or goals can improve not only the work we might do regarding knowledge work emails and so on and work that we might have from our bosses. But, you need to have similar structures when it comes to a creative element.
Perhaps here, where we can say no to things comes from having a good understanding of your reason. So why am I trying to be a little bit more creative? Why do I want to go out and give something else a go? Maybe it's Ross Edley swimming around Gray Britain.
Maybe it's David Goggins. These individuals are demonstrating resilience and resistance to distractions and saying no to other things to go out and do it. So why are they doing it? They're challenging themselves. And in that way, it is a form of creativity.
It's this analogy that things like creativity, happiness, and wisdom all require, almost like, an athletic approach.
Yeah, it should be a training program. It needs to be in your diary. It needs to be prioritized. You can't leave it to chance. So I think that's what we are getting here. Yeah, I think it is, and I think, again, the invitation here for our members is to understand that it can be accessible to everybody.
As long as you take the moment of control, you can empower yourself with a bit of confidence, a bit of Focus, with a bit of resilience to go out and give it a go, whatever that it is. And I tell you what, if you are looking for it, you can head to moonshots.io because Mike; we've got so many goodies on our website, right?
We do, we do. We have not only link-outs and show documents for every single moonshot podcast, of which we've done over 210, but we have show docs and links for all of our 18 master series as well. Not only that, you can sign up for our weekly our monthly newsletters. You can find out a little bit more about the company of moonshots and how we're learning out loud together, as well as, importantly, Mike, seeing what else is on the radar.
Yeah, future shows and all those sorts of goodies. So head over to moonshots.io if you want to get deeper into creativity or any of the 17 other master series that we've done. But Mark, now that we've gone deep, we've had the aha moment, we've had the inspiration, and now we need to twist and turn again. The pragmatic side of us is bearing its fruits, and it is time to get creative.
Not just as a habit but as a lifestyle. And we need to get into what we can do straight after this podcast. What can we do to be more creative? And I think there's noble no better—a place to start, then a six-step breakdown to making creative happen. Right now, it is difficult, if not impossible, to measure creativity; everyone is creative in their own way.
However, there are steps you can take to express your creativity more frequently and effectively. First, you will need to commit to making creativity a practice. Step one, allow yourself to be different, even if it isn't immediately accepted. Be different from what is considered normal. Do not be afraid to ask questions and share your thoughts.
You may never know if your ideas are seen as creative by others. Thinking creatively is about being outside the box. Let go of any notions that your ideas will be graded or considered, right or wrong. Speak your mind, especially if you think it's something you would like to share with others. Step two, take some time every day to be creative.
Creativity is not simply innate. It is something that you learn and trains every day. No novelist, painter, filmmaker, or musician made a career simply sitting down and letting the ideas flow. Instead, they worked at them, learning their craft and coming up with creative ideas daily. Creative ideas only come during creative work.
So get working first; set aside 20 minutes daily to work on your craft. You can build up to a larger time commitment as you hone your skills, even if you don't want to work in a creative field. Practising creative art like painting and music every day can help you increase your creativity in everyday life.
Step three, be curious. Look up anything you don't know. Read books or learn skills that have always interested you. Strike up conversations with people whose stories you want to know. The more material you store in your head, the more creative connections you can make. Step four, get enough rest, food and water.
If you are tired, there's little point in trying to squeeze something creative from your head. Radical ideas may be less likely to pop into your head when you're drained. Take a nap or a tear to recharge. You can think better when your mind is fresh, and you should be able to develop more creative ideas easily.
Your brain cells need glucose to work. Try sweets, chocolates, or some snacks. Most kinds of food containing sugar or starch will become simple as sugars, in the end, are absorbed by your body and used to feed all the cells in your body, including brain cells, so they can continue to function. If you're dehydrated, there will be fewer connections in your brain.
This sometimes gives you a feeling of brain badness. Step five, absorb a diverse array of influences, including those not related to your field. When you are deeply involved with myriad things, you enable yourself to become truly creative. Creativity is about bridging unexpected gaps and for example, taking influences from science and architecture into art.
The Beatles are partially famous because of their ability to bring Eastern influences and instruments like the sitter into western rock and roll. The faint novelist, David Foster Wallace, wrote his masterwork Infinite Jest after years of studying tennis, drug addiction, math, and the science of light and optics; travel is a great way to absorb new influences.
Go somewhere new and explore your mind for inspiration. If you can't afford to go far, go for a walk, jot down what you hear. Alternatively, draw inspiration from a book. Step six, relax. You will not have creative ideas every minute of every day, but that is okay. When you try to force creativity, you can effectively block it.
Don't pick yourself for bad ideas since they are a natural part of the creative process. Just keep trying to be creative each day, and good ideas will eventually
come. Mike, what? Fantastic, practical, pragmatic. We've got tips from the Valorian, who's fantastic on YouTube, and social media with some great videos.
The tips I'm hearing from there speak and build upon some of the advice I think we've started to explore in today's episode. Particularly just this idea of beginning today. Just start, just go out, and whether it's 20 minutes a day or less, just go out and give it a.
Yeah. And just like going to the gym, not every session's going to be your best.
Exactly. And give yourself, and that's the other call out I'd love to connect with: the final piece, that final tip. So if you're going to start today, let's say it's 20 minutes a day, or similar to an insight you shared before, Mike, a bit of advice. And if you're starting to journal one word a day, break it down into its simplest form, and reduce the barriers to entry and the things and the hurdles that are blocking you.
You are beginning today. Break it all the way down, and then don't beat yourself up. Just relax, be content with and happy. In the knowledge that you began today, you've started it; you've started that journey. , you might not reach the bestseller author list quite yet. It might take time, but that's okay.
It is. Okay. And another thing that I'd like about that clip was it really called us to action around the idea of being curious and finding the new.
Yeah. Finding the new with that growth mindset is an idea that we've discussed obviously on the Moon sh show and the master series before.
It's so important for all of us; obviously, all of our members and listeners have a growth mindset daily, Mike. I also like the additional build that the Valorian did regarding the growth mindset, which is surrounding yourself with inspiration, whether that's authors or podcasts.
Yes. Books, music, whatever it might be. Surround yourself or even people, friends, events,
mark, surrounding Mark. Let me build on that. You're igniting different parts of your brain whenever you do new things. For example, let's say you're a runner and always run the same track run path, somewhere different. Run somewhere new, like it is amazing. How habitual we become about the podcast. We listen to maybe once a week, say, I'm just going to find a brand new podcast and let's see what comes, introducing new things, breaking the system, they talk about, there was a study done that I'll try and remember the top line.
They found that people that drove nine to five to and from work every day over decades started forming forms of amnesia because of a lack of variety. So you're with me. So they drive to work and back the same route every day for days, weeks, years, and decades. Because there's a lack of variety in new things, they suffer low-grade amnesia.
They start, they're like, what year is that? I don't know. It all feels insane. How crazy is that?
That's amazing. And I remember you've shared that story before, possibly on our health series, and I think you're right. This idea, I believe, 's called Highway hypnosis. Which I think is great—bit of alliteration. The idea is that you are doing the same thing every day, whether checking your emails or responding to an emergency, whatever it is. So these are, again, barriers or blockers to you setting or beginning that time of going out and creating something.
Isn't it Mike? You have to remove the persistence of the everyday ordinary to go out and achieve something extraordinary.
Yes. You got it. You're on a total roll. Bring just small variety into your life, whether in your creative practice or beyond. Walk a different way.
Shop at a different shop. Get, check out a different TV channel, for goodness sake, whatever it takes to bring some spice to your life because there's no limit to our ideas.
No, there, there's not. And as we've gone on this journey, Mike and members, through the idea of getting inspired around creativity, understanding may be some ways of permissions not to be so afraid. Also let's get inspired as to how we can pick up our pencils or turn off the laptops and think about something new.
Today we've got one more clip, Mike, and as we promised at the beginning of the show, we are now going back to the author Elizabeth Gilbert, who has a great reassuring and empowering breakdown on originality versus authenticity.
One of the things I love that you shared, which I feel is a big subset of fear, Is this idea? It's all been done before.
I think it's the thing that I hear the most in my brain. And when I talk to everyone out in the world, Yeah. About their ideas or their businesses, or their projects. There's this recurring narrative; everything's been done before. And I was wondering if you could speak to originality versus authenticity.
Okay, cool. I'm glad you brought this up. So whenever I talk to somebody who has an idea that. Tremulously excited about, generally speaking, within the next two minutes, they will say it's not very original; it's already been done. And I always say, but you have not yet done it; you have not yet done it.
And the answer is, yeah, guaranteed it's already been done because humans are really inventive and inquisitive and creative, and we've had 40,000 years of the arts, and pretty much everything has been done, and that's fine. But, like even Shakespeare, half of his stories he totally stole from older stories because there aren't that many new stories to tell.
But he told them in a way that had never been told before. And then 500 years later, We're still borrowing them from him. We're all just borrowing from each other. And even the most original piece of creativity you ever saw in your life where you're like is groundbreaking. I've never seen anything like that before.
Guaranteed. I could bring in ten professors and academics who could look at it and say. This is somebody who had read this book, or they had heard this symphony, or they had been, they were playing off of this, or they were rejecting that. They're responding. All we do as humans is respond to stuff already coming before us, but you're allowed to add to the pile.
You're allowed to add to the pile. And I always say that whenever I look at art, that's. So original. I can admire it, but it doesn't move me.
What moves me is the humanity in an authentic piece of creation where somebody was doing something, whatever it was, because they had to, because they wanted to, brought them to life, and ignited their soul.
That gives the shimmer of gold to something and makes me feel like my heart's been changed, my mind's been changed. The world looks different than it did before, so I don't care if it's been done. I don't care if it's been done 10,000 times. If you need to do it.
Suppose you need to do it. That's perfect because we've used this sports analogy the entire show, and it's like Nike, but we're talking about creativity here and what is called to arms by Elizabeth Gilbert.
Yeah, that's exactly it, Mike. It's the call to arms and calls to action for all of us, you and I, all of our members and listeners. It has the permission to go out and give something a go today, regardless of whether you have an author that you are you admire and you want to pick it up and give it a go, but you're never going to reach Stephen King level within a year or so.
That's okay. You have permission to go out and create things, take time, take dedication and hard work. . , as we've learned on the show, Mike. All the individuals, entrepreneurs, successful people we've studied, and tips and habits we've tried to understand and put into our own lives take dedication and time.
Only owning the ability to permit yourself to say no to things and the permission to say, yes, I'm going to go out and give it a go myself. It is something that I think blocks many people. And as we heard from Daniel Pink and the Power of Regret, it's the things that you don't give a go that people regret on their deathbed.
So you might as well go and give it a go.
What is there to lose?
There's nothing to lose because there's nothing else that you've necessarily done; you haven't written that book yet, so why not give it a go? You don't need to compare yourself to that existing piece of content.
Exactly. In the case of the book. Exactly. But what a great argument to close out our creativity master series. Mark, what is getting your attention? We've covered six big ideas here and plenty more. Which one is going to get a little extra homework from you?
I think it's the idea of saying no to things, within the concept of Michael Bunge and giving us permission to go out and do great work.
Whatever that great work or creativity might be, you've got to be able to disappoint or say no to other people. What about you, Mike? What are you taking away from today?
The stars have aligned. I'm total with you. It is insane. Yes. To one thing. You must say no to others. That is very well said mark. Great point.
I'm going to work on that one. I'm going to work on where I am in this process. I'm going to try and understand Steve Steven Kotler's work as well. So Mark, thank you to you and thank you to you, our members and subscribers. We are delighted to share this journey into creativity with you. We enjoy learning out loud together.
We enjoy this. This is a team sport, this whole being the best version of yourself. And today, in this master series, episode 18, it was all about creative creativity. And Elizabeth Gil helped us overcome our fears of creating self-doubt. And then John Cle told us that this is a. Style, a lifestyle of play and calm.
And Stephen Kotler gave us those four big stages of flow cycles. We got six great steps to creativity and finding curiosity in everything. First, and most importantly, Elizabeth Gilda called us to arms, challenged us, and invited us to create your idea today. Bring your imagination to bear it today.
That's what it is all about for creativity. It is all about, being the best version of yourself, creativity, and animation; it powers the world. You can do it. We can do it. And that's what we do together on the Moonshots podcast and this episode of the Moonshots Master Series.
Okay, that's a wrap.