Heroic Chat with Eric Maisel: Making Yourself Proud

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P.m. plus maybe one or two. Excited to be here today. Special guest, Dr. Eric Maisel, one of my all time favorite teachers in general, particularly on creativity and he's a therapist as well. We'll talk more details but Rethinking Depression is one of his great books, the Creative Book and Mastering Creative Anxiety. We'll go to do a search in a second where I'll show you all the content we have featuring Dr. May Zell and his great work. But I'll just check in real quick. Great to see Eric.

Great to see you. Brian, Good to be here.

Yeah, thrilled to be here as well. Let me say hi real quick. Dilsher, great to see you. Coach Anthony, excited to connect with you. Plus one on Wednesday. Robin, Megan, Karen, that T shirt's looking solid. David, Daniella. Alex. 84 climbing back up. Let's go, let's go, let's go. Jocelyn, always nice to see you. Lori, Lucas, great to see you. Glenn, Phillip, great to see you. Dennis, David Ryan. Sarah Maynardo. Ryan, I heard that you and Anthony are excited about Alexander kicking off the 51 day challenge again. All in. We're just figuring out the timing. We got the social, we got the the book, we got the year end but we're going to do some great stuff on social with that. Great to see you. Jamil, Kira, Pauline, on my first screen, Eric, you were kind enough to offer to guide us in a brief exercise to connect to our best selves, which we like to bookend our conversations here at 101pm with. Would love it if you can, if you can take the lead and help us really check in and as we like to say, flip the switch and invite the best version of ourselves to join us.

Yeah, let me set the stage for the visualization. As we all know in cognitive therapy, the idea is to do something with the thoughts that aren't serving us. Whether to wrestle them down to the ground or find substitutes or do something. It occurred to me that it would be lovely to that rather than having those thoughts occur at all, maybe to do something about the source of those thoughts, namely visualizing our mind as a room that we could redesign and redecorate and so that the thoughts that arose from that new place would be different, more on our side and more like the thoughts that could serve us. So let's do that as a visualization. If folks would like to get settled, feet on the ground, eyes closed or open, whatever you like, and begin to picture your mind as a room that's furnished that you enter and imagine the changes that you might want to make to this room. Maybe there's a bed of nails in there that you regularly sleep on. Maybe you'd like to throw that out and replace it with an easy chair. That's a useful change. Maybe you want to stall some windows so that a breeze can blow through, get rid of those stuffy thoughts, thoughts that aren't serving you. Have them blow right away. Maybe the walls are dingy. Paint them a nice Navajo white. Or maybe cheerful wallpaper. See that light switch? Right. Right by the door where you entered. Let's have that double as a calmness switch. So whenever you enter the room that is your mind, you. As you turn on the light, you also create a calmer environment instantly, just like that. I think you get the idea of how easy and valuable it might be to visualize your mind this way and make these kinds of changes. By the way, since it's a room, it has four corners, so you can have different things in the four corners. For instance, in one corner, maybe you'll have a speaker's corner, like in Hyde park in London, where you get to tell your truth. Doesn't mean you have to share that truth in the world. May not be safe to share that truth, but at least you get to speak your truth. So installing a speaker's corner is a smart idea. Sure. You sense that we could spend our whole time just redesigning and redecorating this room, which would be lovely work. But let's let us come back slowly back here. If what I'm talking about interests you, then just continue the process of redesigning your mind later on today. And now come back when you're ready.

Well, that was nice. I was already calmed by your voice before I flipped the switch. Well, before I flipped the switch. And then I found myself. Personally, I was surrounded by books at first, and then I was in this office studio. And then I just wished I had more walls to be able to fit the heroes, the books, the empty whiteboard, the thoughts, the light, the breeze.

It's also nicest to install a chest of drawers so that you have lots of space for different things like your. Like your life purpose china, or your this or your that. Your snow.

I love it. I love it. And plenty of seating for friends to visit, I imagine, in my library. I imagined having the thoughts ready at hand from some of my favorite teachers and be able to pull off a book and. And live their wisdom. What a beautiful meditation. Thank you for guiding us with that. Let us do the quick search so that we can see all the wisdom we have in the app featuring Dr. Maisel and his wisdom, we've got three. How many books have you written at this point? Eric is one of the most prolific creative artists and writers who coaches and writes on creativity. But how many books have you personally written now?

Between 50 and 60.

All right, so I'm a little behind. I only have three of them. I've read more than the three that I featured. But we have Rethinking Depression. Phenomenal book. Again, Eric is a therapist in addition to a creativity coach. But check that out. Really, really powerful book. The creativity book, which is a 366, I think, or 365 day ideas. Phenomenal. One of the best books on creativity. You hear me talk about Steven Pressfield a lot. Eric is in that same group of authors that have really inspired my own creative work. We could talk about that for a very long time. And then Mastering Creative Anxiety is another one of my favorite books that we featured. The idea that anxiety goes with creativity is a profound concept that Eric articulates beautifully in that book. And then we have some plus ones. We also have a ton of great quotes. I was looking at this as I was preparing over the last 72 hours. And check out the quotes. There's some really, really, really good, pithy gems in here. Fifteen of them that we pulled out that I think you'll also enjoy. But Eric, as we discussed before we came on, I want to talk about some of the intellectual distinctions and practical distinctions you've made over your career. But I just want to hear about you. I want to hear about what brought you here. Of course. Our company is called Heroic. We like to feature different heroic quests and the path to mastery. And I know yours is a fascinating story, so I just love to hear more from you, whatever you want to share. Hopefully we will hear about some dragons, perhaps some stars, guides, some buddies and all that good stuff.

So, as you know, there are two developmental models out there, two major models. One is that we develop and one is that we undevelop. The Freudian model is that we develop, that there's some kind of journey we go on of development. Jung had a different idea. He thought we were born whole and then unfortunately undeveloped until we hit our midlife crisis when we noticed how much we'd undeveloped. And then we had to figure ourselves out again with respect to just this one idea. I'm a Jungian. That is, I think I was exactly me at 5 or 6 or 7 and then had to live life to become me. But I don't think I had to develop. I think I was whole then. And French author Camus says writers deal with three. Three themes their whole life that. That are known to them in childhood. I think that was true for me too, that there were some major themes already known to me. So I was born in 1947, right after the war, into a Brooklyn neighborhood of Jews and Italians. World War II was on our mind. Folks who ran the the Corner Deli had the concentration camp tattoos. It was a just post World War II moment. And the phrase from World War II resistance fighter meant something to me even as a very young kid. And I had it in the back of my mind unconsciously, I could not have known this consciously because I thought I was in math and physics. That's who I thought I was. Thought I was a math and physics boy. But unconsciously, I think I always knew that I had to be a resistance fighter, that that's actually what my role in life was going to be. So I went to a math and science high school, started college too young at 16, flunked out really fast because there was nothing about college that interested me. Joined the army at 18, got out at 21, and then did that thing you do when you have no idea what you're doing. And you will understand this, Brian. I got a degree in philosophy. That was the first thing I did. And then at 24, I started writing my first novel. And I lived through my twenties by ghost writing. It's not easy as a writer to live by writing, but I've lived by writing pretty much my whole life of my, whatever, 60 years of adulthood. I've worked for other people for, I think, about three months. I think that accidentally happened at some point. But other than that, I've been doing my thing for all of these years. And so at 24, I started writing my first novel. And I wrote many books in my twenties. But to use existential language, it wasn't an act of good faith to continue writing if it wasn't making enough money. We had little kids and I needed to be more, so to speak, responsible. And so I retooled and became a therapist. Took some years to do that, but in my early 30s, that's what I did. I retooled and became a California licensed marriage and family therapist, comma. But, and this is an important part of my journey, I did not believe in the therapy model almost from the beginning. I didn't believe in the idea that therapists were really genuinely diagnosing and treating mental disorders. I didn't think there was any real diagnosis. God knows I wasn't diagnosing. I was not a medical doctor. That seemed like made up stuff to me, the idea that we were diagnosing. So I knew I had to get out of therapy and do something else. And coaching was not a thing yet, way back then. And I was working exclusively with creative performing artists. Those were the folks I wanted to work with. And so I moved from therapy to what I called creativity consulting because, as I say, coaching wasn't a thing yet. But as soon as coaching became a word, I segued to creativity coaching, maybe inventing the phrase way back then. And since then that's been my. My main work is working with creative performing artists as a creativity coach. But at the same time, I've been in resistance to the contemporary pseudo medical model of diagnosing and treating that's harming so many millions of people. And this is a big separate subject, perhaps, but it's part of my journey, an important part of my journey to stick up for especially kids who have no choice but to be labeled by somebody, by some adult who will say that they have whatever it is they want to say. Adhd, odd, pediatric, bipolar, something. And then of course, put them on medications that are gateway drugs to addiction. So we have a huge problem that is not addressed at all. Let me just give you one parenthesis and then I'll return it to you for where we might be. But the parentheses is that among the many things I do, I'm the lead editor, creator of and lead editor on something called the Ethics International Press, Critical Psychology and Critical Psychiatry series. We've had three books come out so far. We had a book called Deconstructing ADHD just come out. We have three books coming out in the spring, one of which is Psychiatry and the Law, which is a really interesting area about who gets to be called an expert witness or what informed consent really means. Some really important subjects. So that's all about. I think I'm meandering, but I'll. I'll meander back to you. But that's. That's a bit of a thumbnail of my journey.

Wonderful thumbnail. Starting in 1947 and imagining the progression through. I forgot that you served in the army. That's a. That's a. It's beautiful to imagine you having that experience and having that shape your thinking and your work so many different ways.

Let me interrupt you, Brian, because I just. This is sort of a joke memory, but I have to share it. I. Even in college, I hated College. I shouldn't have been there, but I joined the Air Force ROTC because I loved marching. So the. The only. The only grade I got that was a passing grade in college was Air Force rotc. I got an. I got an A in that. I also got an A in basketball. Gym. I can remember, but everything else was.

An F. You were putting your socks on right, John Wood style, putting your shoes on nice and tight. What did you love about marching? Just to just.

I have no idea. I really have no idea.

I can feel the rhythm, the artistry.

But subsequently, I was. I was a platoon sergeant in Korea and then a drill sergeant at Fort Dix, New Jersey, which. That all seems preposterous in retrospect, but that's who I was.

Yes. And, I mean, I read your books, and there's definitely that element of it, you know, just that calm, confident. Let's go. We got to take the next step. We got to show up. We got to be professionals. I can feel that without any level of. Yeah, I felt that immediately. That's what I get. Reading your books. Get to work, get started. Get started again. Show up, make your bed, you know, and all that. We're actually working with. I had a great chat, and he may be here today with the commander of an ROTC unit back east and just thrilled to bring heroic into their world. And to imagine, you know, me as a college student, you in rotc, getting access to this wisdom, know what would have happened to my life trajectory, et cetera. So that's amazing. Again, so many different angles we can go. And we'll hit a little bit of all of it, because I want to talk creativity. I want to talk rethinking depression, but let's go to the creativity for a moment. What's the biggest distinction that you've made in working with, I don't know how many personally, at least hundreds, if not thousands of individuals. One on one.

Yeah.

What have you learned?

Well, just do a few headlines. One is I try to sell all clients on the idea of a morning creativity practice. Practice being a big word, namely that it's something you get to every day. What everybody understands, they don't quite realize it till I say it, but what everybody understands is if you're a creative person, you miss two or three days. Suddenly months and years vanish. That's what happens. The rest of life takes over. We get too busy, and so we innocently let go of those two or three days, but then suddenly three months or six months have vanished. So that's why the Idea of daily practice is so important. I tell clients that our meaning needs don't end on the weekend. I don't believe there's any reason why there should be a five day creative week. This is something we do seven days a week because we have those needs all the time. And there are some specific reasons why. I try to sell them on the idea of it being a morning practice. And for my peeps and your peeps alike, they're already doing stuff in the morning before their real day begins. They're doing their Tai chi or their exercise or their journaling or something. So I have to sell them on the idea that they need to move that to another part of the day for the sake of their creative life. So that they're creating now comes first. And there are three big reasons why it ought to come first or must come first from my point of view. And that is a. Of course if you showed up seven days a week to your creativity, you get a lot done. That's the obvious one. The second is not very well known to people. I did a book on this called Sleep Thinking. It's the idea that we obviously we dream while we sleep. Everybody knows that we dream in rem sleep, but we think in non rem sleep. If you wake up a poet in non rem sleep, she'll be writing poetry. Our brain is working all the time at night. And if you give yourself a sleep thinking prompt the night before, like gee, I wonder what Mary wants to say to John in chapter three of my novel. Your brain will have Mary and John converse in non rem sleep through the night. And then when you wake up, all you have to do is take dictation. It's right there available to you. You can get an hour and a half or two hours of free creativity time just by using your sleep thinking. That's a huge benefit and a huge blessing that most people are not aware of or using. And then the third reason is the existential reason you'll appreciate this. And that is if you do something real and authentic first thing each day, then you have the experience of making meaning that day and the rest of the day can be half meaningless and you won't get depressed. It's important to do real stuff first. And then if we have just errands and chores and this and that to do in the rest of the day, we can survive that if we've done some real work first. If you try to do it the other way around, if you try to do your creative work in the evening, a You're too tired by the end of the day. And B, you're a little bit blue because you haven't gotten to your real stuff. And so that combination of fatigue and background blueness makes it really difficult to get to your creative work. By the way, everybody who's listening understands that what works for you, works for you. Obviously, the proof is in the pudding. If you want, if you want to do your creating at 2 in the morning or 4pm or what have you, that's wonderful. But if you're not getting your work done, then I really recommend that you try to make this switch. Which of course, as you know, would be a new habit and it'll take some time. And we all know about new habits that the, the two headlines about new habits are when you fail, forgive yourself and get back on the horse. Just forgive yourself and, and show up the next day until it really becomes a habit. When people get this, when my clients get this, it just transforms their creative life from very intermittent creating to lots of productivity.

Everybody hear that? If I hadn't delivered the memo, I've certainly been repetitive, if not that clear in the before. But guys, this is why one of my most important targets, as you know, in my work identity protocol is I'm creative before reactive. So I was creative before reactive. Today, you will not see me checking my email, going online, looking at my messages until I have done something meaningful, which is an important word we're going to come back to with Eric and creative. So before I'm reacting, I'm creating. Steve Chandler used creative and reactive. Same exact letters, different order. You want to pay attention to which one you're doing. And then I love the unabashedly, no, no, guys, seven days a week, the need for meaning, the need to express ourselves is a seven day a week, 365 thing. I love Stephen King's take on it. I've talked a lot about that, used him as. I'm a365 guy. I breathe every day. I'm here with you all every day. Of course I'm going to create every day. So, Eric, I love the way you succinctly captured that. It sounded like you may have something you want to add.

Yeah, I just want to piggyback on what we're both saying, which is, yes, I believe that we should get to our creative work first thing, absolutely, comma. But in the real lives that people lead, especially if you're an entrepreneur or coach running a business, what have you, it's very hard not to check your email. First maybe to put out fires or just to see what's going on. I think that's a real problem for all of us. So I suggest to people that they learn how to glance at their email. See if there's one thing or two things that are absolutely crucial that you have to attend to it. Just stay sleepy, try not to wake up. That's really the whole goal here or the whole.

I love it. Here's the way I frame that up. So the way that I like to do it personally and that has been really powerful for me. I don't do anything halfway. So for me, if I'm going to go into email, then it's like I'm in email. But what I'll do is by doing what you're talking about and being as all in as I am, you know, I'm doing deep work in the middle of the night, not only am I getting the benefit of sleep, sleep time, thinking of my, my unconscious mind, but I'll get up in the middle of the night. Oh yeah, yeah. I'm consciously thinking through a problem. So oftentimes it's very clear to me. And I always meditate. I wake up, I meditate in order to connect to my own intuition of what's important now. And what I personally do is before I go into email, I may draft an email or two or three or I use text messages imessages a lot. But I'll do that in airplane mode. So I'll be creative before reactive so I'm not having to sift through other people's ideas and what may or may not be important. Again, this person is a practice that works for me, but then also to honor your comma. But we each have different, you know, what's important now and different kind of rhythms in our lives. Of course. And even for me, mine just changed from finishing my book, polishing it to literally overnight it just changed. Dude. Now I gotta promote it. So now my schedule is completely different. What was important for me yesterday, and I mean it literally yesterday, is not anymore. Yeah, book is done package now. It's, it's reaching out as much as I can, but I still love to identify and do at least one important thing creatively. Even if it's a minute or two or three to get the meaning you're talking about and to have the discipline and the fortitude to do what I decided was most important before I let people in. So I just love that. The ping pong on that.

That's right. Let me piggyback on what you just said and translated into my language. And that is when you were shifting from writing the book to promoting the book in my language. We've had this metaphor, as you know, for thousands of years of the purpose to life. And we have to overcome that metaphor. We have to get rid of it and make the paradigm shift to multiple life purposes that we choose. The idea that there isn't a purpose to life, but they're only our life purpose choice choices, and they shift. That's what you were just articulating, our life purpose choices. What's important to say that more simply what's important to us shifts. And you gave one example of a shift from writing the book to promoting the book. There can be very dramatic shifts. Let's say that you've decided that a top priority for you is your health, let's say. But then your son comes to you and says, dad, I need a kidney. Well, then your health drops down the list and saving your son's life ascends that list. Now that now going into surgery, which is not good for your health is the thing you're going to do, and that's how real life works, is that our life purposes can shift that dramatically. Meaning can drain out of the thing we're doing. We could believe that we're doing something important and meaning drains out of it. I had the experience of interviewing a lot of people who know stuff and each one had had a big meaning crisis of one sort or another. One person was Mother Teresa's right hand nun and she stopped believing in God and in her order and in Mother Teresa. She had a big shift. But the headline was it took each of these people on average five years to make a change. The meaning drained out here. But it wasn't until five years later that they got out of their order or got out of the relationship or did X. That's a long time to suffer with a meaning crisis. So one of my phrases that I try to have clients buy into and understand deeply is sooner rather than later. If you get an intuition that something big just happened, that you suddenly no longer believe something or now suddenly do believe something, see if you can stay put in that moment and not have to wait five years of suffering to make the change that you intuitively know right in that second, you're going to have to make somewhere down the road so beautiful.

And then to play on that, what we try to do is to frame it up. We have our soul force equation, which is how we kind of activate our potential. It's kind of our take on a heroic take on Tolle's power of now. Yeah, yeah, but what does that mean? Get your energy up, focus it on what's important. Now we call it W I n win and do that consistently. And you have an opportunity to be as powerful as you can be. And for us, we go even more granular. So to use. And again, everything you said, yes. And I can be doing deep work. And there are some times when I lock my door, the kids know it's not the time to come in. There are other times when I'm in my office, I'm doing deep work, but they'll come in, Daddy. And in that moment, there's an opportunity to shift my attention to what's important now, which is responding to their bid. So we're having fun in our community, taking exactly what you're talking about and then deliberately. And I want to talk to you about your beautiful contribution on meaning making. To make meaning in the moment by bringing our attention, focusing on what we have decided is important. Now I know again, that could be our creative work. It can be our time with our kids, it can be optimizing our health playfully. On that. If my kid needed a kidney, that's when I would dial my health up higher than I've ever had it, knowing that I'm making sacrifices, but I'd also get in the best possible shape to make sure my kidney was as healthy as possible. And I was ready to navigate that as mindfully and heroically.

You do it, you would do it your way.

Let's go. I got one kiddie to work on. I better be getting ready for that. Talk to us about meaning and the importance.

Let me. Because I do have my own take on it and that is this is. It's going to sound very simple, but hope people can take it in. Meaning is merely a feeling. Purpose is a choice, but meaning is a feeling. And we can't really make feelings happen, but we can try to coax them into existence. And so I have two phrases, meaning investments and meaning opportunities. That is where we meaning investment is when we throw our human resources into a project or a task with the hope, not the guarantee, with the hope that we'll get the experience of meaning from that we may well not. Takes a lot of maturity to do things over, let's say a long haul of time. Write a novel over a two year space of time when on most days you're not getting the experience of meaning from the work. So clearly, if you believe that you need that experience, you're going to Stall or block or quit, because you're not getting it. You're going to say to yourself, this doesn't feel meaningful. Yes, it doesn't feel meaningful, but stop needing it to feel meaningful. Live your life purposes, do the next right thing. Do your work. If you get the experience of meaning from that, that's a blessing. That's, that's a bonus. That's wonderful. In the days before D Day, we don't really care if Eisenhower was experiencing that time as meaningful or not. We just need him to get the invasion right. We need him to do a certain. His heroic work. We need him to do his heroic work irrespective. Irrespective of how he's feeling about things. If you think of meaning more like joy, then you understand life can't be joyful all the time. It just can't. I mean, maybe for some one human being somewhere it is, but seems unlikely to me it can't be. Which means headline meaning comes and goes. People have it in their mind because of this phrase, the meaning of life. They have this idea that they should be seeking meaning and that once they find it, then it would be permanently there. Nope, it can't be permanently there because as a feeling, it must come and go. So if you want more of it, most people want more meaning. If you want more of it, then you try to coax it into existence. And one of the best ways to coax meaning into existence is to remind yourself of your childhood loves, because those were the purest things. If you were the kid who loved building ships or reading books or watching film or whatever it is, you probably still love that. And that's probably still a place of meaning for you. And in my language, a meaning opportunity that if you were, if you loved film back then, watching a good film now, you'll probably experience as meaningful. Whereas some of the huge things we expect to feel meaningful, like our PhD program or something, they often don't feel very meaningful at all. So to begin to understand for yourself, for the individual to begin to understand for herself what's actually been experienced as meaningful, maybe a conversation with your aunt as opposed to your PhD program. This is personal learning that then allows you to understand where meaning might come from for you.

That's so great. I got a picture of Eisenhower above Eleanor up there, and I'm looking at him every day thinking of exactly that, which made me think of a phrase I want to unpack with you in a moment, which is existential decisiveness, which is a way that we direct our purpose toward an end and then have a shot at creating the meaning. Of course. And it's funny because just last week I was recording the audiobook for the book, right? And I'm sitting there and I love it. It was it. I love it. I just absolutely loved bringing the book to life in the audio form. And I have goosebumps right now. I remembered being in high school, I was the kid who always loved to read out loud. I was the one that was hoping the teacher would call on me to be able to read the little section out loud. I have goosebumps again. So I literally had this relationship with my teenage self 30 years ago. 30 plus years ago, as I experienced the joyful meaning and flow, however you want to describe it, of that moment and those moments of recording the book. So that was a very fresh personal connection I was able to consciously make in that moment that I felt was worth highlighting.

Yeah, for me, I mean, obviously I love reading. That was probably my primary thing. And I loved math and physics, that sort of stuff. But I also love solving problems, even at 5 or 6. And my mom, I grew up with a single mom, the two of us, she had friends, and she would bring me, her friends, problems to solve at five or six. She said, you know, Eric. So Nancy and her husband are having trouble at night because he wants the window open so that be a breeze. And she wants the window closed so the bugs don't come in. And I would instantly say, screens. Get a screen.

So I just. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Just that. Just that one of the things I love to do is problem solving. And of course, in coaching, we don't solve problems per se, but clients bring us naughty problems. And we have to have our ways of how to unpack them and think about them and figure out what suggestions might help.

That's so good. And I've been thinking of this as we've been chatting, but just. You remind me so much of Phil Stutz.

Who?

My beloved coach, spiritual father. He's back there. He had the exact same relationship with therapy when he came in. You know, what are we doing here? You know, how do we actually help people? Just diagnose them. What do we got going on? And he, too, as a child, would, you know, basically be a therapist for his parents and for their friends and whatnot. So I love that connection.

Although more coaches grew up in the.

Same era, not too far from one another either.

Yeah, more a coach than a therapist. Because I would like us to shift from the belief that the therapists are doing a certain kind of good work. I have trouble with that.

I love it. Well, look, I go off on to be a patient. Do you know the etymology of the word patient?

Exactly.

To submit is what a patient does. So when I was going through some stuff with my brother and a cat.

Isn't it interesting that a human being, as she crushes the throne threshold of a psychiatrist office, is instantly a patient?

It's just interesting in that vernacular, I would encourage that individual to be a conqueror. We do not submit. We seek to conquer and to achieve that which we set out to. And then of course, the therapist or the coach may be a guide and an aide, but we're on the hero's journey. We certainly aren't submitting just as a parentheses.

I just, I just want to acknowledge the pressure that parents are under nowadays to have their kids submit to one diagnosis or another and one chemical or another. They're under pressure from mass media, from the schools, from school counselors, from so to speak experts, all of whom are making believe that their kid has a thing called ADHD or ODD or whatever the label is. And so parents, parents are really struggling. They're struggling as human beings in their day lives, in their other lives, but they're really struggling as parents in this moment where big pharma is just winning, winning, winning, winning the media war. I'm sure, I'm guessing you're not a person who watches much television, but if.

What's that, Eric?

But if you were, you would know that every third or every second, two out of three commercials are pharmaceutical, are drug commercials now nowadays. And it's very hard for all of us who are in that other camp, the anti psychiatry camp, to compete against two out of three commercials being about take this drug, take that drug.

We had a similar chat the other day and the joke was you watch the super bowl, one ad is for sugary foods, the next ad is for alcohol. Then they'll throw in a car ad. But you got the sugary food, fast food, junk food, you've got the alcohol and then you've got that which will solve the physiological imbalances that are created, the diabetes.

Then you have the diabetes ad.

That's right, of course, yes. So saving that discussion for another time. It's an important part of being a resistance fighter. So I'm not discounting the importance of it. And check out, I drew it up. I just want to make a point here and maybe we'll explore some themes from the book, but please do. If you feel inspired, check out the notes on Rethinking depression. And this book feels like a layperson's version to the series you have created as part of the deeper dive into specific important themes. But check it out. One of the main themes that we can talk about now. Actually, I'd like to talk about this now. Unhappiness happens. So there's a story as you frame it up, that part of the problem is the failure to embrace the fact that we can't always be happy. Happiness happens. We don't need to say diagnostically that, oh, that means that you are. This no means you're human, etc. So I'd like to hear about that. And then to connect it back to anxiety goes with being human, let alone the creative process. But tell us your thoughts on. On the fact that unhappiness happens as it relates to rethinking depression. Please.

Let me. Let me circle around for a second. Let me go from anxiety sideways. So most people, if they hear the expression honor the creative process, we'll have that go in one ear and out the other. It just. It won't settle. It won't land. Doesn't have any particular resonance. But there really is a creative process that must be embraced. And that creative process comes with mistakes and messes. It's the kind of process where you might spend two whole years writing a book that never works. That's part of the process. Who wants to hear that? Who wants to hear that kind of harsh reality? The process might look like that process also means that only a portion of what we do is excellent for everybody. Much of what we do is ordinary. And that's true. Pundits who claim to know will say that Beethoven's first, third, fifth, seventh, and ninth symphonies are better than his second, fourth, sixth, and eighth. But you can't do nine without eight. You can't do eight without seven. You can't skip the things that don't work. And a lot of what we do is bound to be ordinary, and that has to be okay. We forgive other people their ordinariness. If we read a book that's ordinary, we go, okay, that was fine. We don't badmouth that person. But if we wrote that book, we would badmouth ourselves. Man, that wasn't. That was not terrific. That was not great. So. And part of the process. And this is a headline. We're getting to a headline. One of the reasons that the creative process produces so much anxiety is that the process is essentially having to make one choice after another. Put the red here or put it there. Send my character to Barcelona or send my character to Paris. Put a comma in, take a comma out. One choice after another, and choosing provokes anxiety. That means that anxiety has to thread through the process, since the process is continual. Choosing and choosing provokes anxiety when we're in the trance of working, or what you probably would call flow. When we're in flow, we do that choosing, so to speak, unconsciously. We do it automatically. And that's the only reason we can really get creative work done, is that because in the trance of working, we can do all of that. Choosing automatically doesn't mean we make right choices, but at least we're not pestering ourselves about whether we have to make another choice or not. So choosing provokes anxiety. And also for many people, going into the unknown provokes anxiety. They would say it doesn't. They would say, well, there are no monsters in there in my brain. It's not dangerous to go write a novel or paint a painting that doesn't. But secretly sort of unknown to themselves, especially if they're dealing with human material like a memoir or something about their real lived experience, feels dangerous in there. So the main thing that human beings do when they experience anxiety is to get the heck out of there, is to flee the encounter. That's the number one thing they do. We have other tactics for dealing with anxiety, but that's. And that's why so many people are either not getting to their creative work or getting there, feeling a tendril of anxiety. A little of this choosing anxiety or dangerousness anxiety and fleeing the encounter early, maybe saying something to themselves like, I showed up for 10 minutes, that's enough for today. But that wasn't enough for today. So that's all by way of saying anxiety has to be part of this process. That means that every creative person needs a portable anxiety management tool or two. Not just your great meditation practice that keeps you calm for that 45 minutes, but something that you can actually bring to the computer or the canvas or to your. Something that keeps you calm where you are. And the one I like to sell clients on the most is the one that I write about in my book, 10 Zen Seconds. The 10 of that title is 5 seconds on the inhale, 5 seconds on the exhale, namely a long breath, deep breath. And the technique is to drop a useful phrase into a deep breath and acquire the physiological benefits of deep breathing with the cognitive benefits of right thinking. It's a very simple idea. And so I call this. Essentially, these are affirmations in a breath. And I call these guys incantations.

And.

So I try to provide clients with simple tactics and strategies like this. A deep breath with a phrase inside of it. And the phrase I like to sell them the most on with respect to creative process is I'm completely on the inhale. Stopping. I'm completely stopping. And what that phrase is to signify is I'm completely stopping my need to get things right. Because think about it all day long. We're supposed to get things right. That's kind of like our job in life. Drive on the correct side of the road, pick our kids up at 3, get things right. That's responsible, that's reasonable. And then somehow a time is supposed to come where I get to make big mistakes and messes and not get things right. That's a hard transition. So folks need a, you can see what my hand is doing. A ceremonial bridge. A way to get from your everyday thinking where things have to be right to this other place where you can make mistakes. And this little incantation thing that I just described is one of those ceremonial bridges that folks can use. I think I'll put a period there and I no longer remember the beginning of the question. So I'll let you. I'll let you aim me.

Look, we can talk for about a month and a half and still barely scratch the deep well that is your wisdom in those 50 plus books. We were talking about anxiety going with the creative process, and you beautifully described that in a practical way and also gave us a tool to deal with that. And then also we were talking about the fact that unhappiness happens and that the denial of that fact is part of the root of the problem with our diagnostic and quote therapeutic models.

Well, this will completely dovetail with your universe and the things that interest you and matter to you. I don't think we're in this game to be happy. First of all, I don't think that's what's on our mind, really. I think what's on our mind is to make ourselves proud by our efforts. I'm just pausing for effect because I think that's what we're really after. And that's not easy to do. It's not easy to live our life purposes. It's not easy to know what they are even. By the way, I suggest that people try to create their list or menu of life purposes as a snapshot in time to have a sense of what's important to you now. But it's not easy to live our life purposes. And when we don't, when we're Consumed by busyness, the busyness of errands and responsibilities. And this, that and the other thing. We are not making. Not only we're not happy, that's one thing, but we're not making ourselves proud by our efforts. That's why I have a book called the Power of Daily Practice, which, of course, you would resonate with. And that's. That's the idea. Not just that daily practice is so valuable, but that days need to be negotiated. We need to negotiate each day with ourselves so that our multiple daily practices get on our agenda for that day. And my vision, this is. This isn't a literal vision. This won't make sense literally. It's more metaphoric. But my vision, my. My metaphoric vision is you do a daily practice, then you go into meaning neutral for a while. You don't pester yourself about meaning or not meaning. Maybe you make some popcorn, you relax, then you go on to your next practice, your next important practice thing, that one of you that serves one of your life purposes. Then you go into meaning neutral again. Maybe you, for me, might be. I might watch the West Wing or something or some old show or something. Then I. Then I go on to my next important. So it's not quite this mechanical, but it's the idea of negotiating a day around those things that are important, so that maybe you get finally, for the first time in life, to three or four important. Three or four of your important life purposes in one day. Not one a month, but three or four a day. It's a very. It's an organized. For people who are still fighting with ideas of routine and regularity and all of that. If you're still fighting with that, this won't sit well. But we both agree that the mature place to be is to come to this place of not just discipline, which is not a word I love, but devotion. And Pavarami has the quote I love, which is, people say I'm disciplined, but it's not discipline, it's devotion. And there's a big difference.

Oh, I love it. And even. I mean, the root of discipline is disciple, which is one who is devoted to an ideal, obvious order, you know, to paraphrase the basic meaning. But this is. It's funny because I had written down below my notes in terms of the things I wanted to discuss next, make yourself proud. And then as an extension of your answer to my prior question, you said, and what we need to do is not try to make ourselves happy, it's make ourselves proud. And again, this is. This is In A single word. It's arete. Close the gap. Make yourself proud. Express the best version of yourself. Express. Ultimately, it's moments. Moments. Moment. But. But those moments include moments in which we deliberately, mindfully choose to watch the West Wing. But that's an act of creative restoration and relaxation and celebration of other moments. Deep meaning. And again, we haven't gone deep, Eric, into our app, but this is the app. The app that we've created as a daily practice to help people identify who they are at their best, their identities in their energy, work, and love. And you'll like the joke. I always throw shade at Freud.

Yeah.

I say, I don't agree with Freud on basically anything. I like his ego in Super Ego. The only other thing I really like that he said was that a good life comes down to two things, work and love. And I say, yeah, but if your energy isn't where it needs to be because of poor lifestyle choices, good luck showing up in your work or love, which is the perfect segue into the next part of our chat. But energy, work in love. We help people get clarity on their identities, their virtues, and their behaviors they engage in on a daily basis to, in your words, make themselves proud.

Yep. If I may. I know, I know. We're not gonna. We're not gonna get to everything, but. But I do want to say that even though I believe in multiple life purposes, I do believe that we can construct a life purpose statement that does a decent job of standing for who we want to be and how we want to present ourselves in the world. For me, it's do the next right thing. So even though I have multiple life purposes, that's my life purpose statement. I also believe in the idea of life purpose icons, things that have as much power as a Star of David or a cross or that kind of thing. People, I think, are well advised to think through what their life purpose icon might be and have it fabricated, wear it just like a Star of David or. So even though we have multiple life purposes, that doesn't mean we can't have a small something, a phrase or an image that does that kind of work of keeping us grounded in our reasons for being and keeps us on track.

So again, Eric, the coherence. And again, this is why I've always had such an affinity to you and your work. And I believe that it's at least at a level, some level, mutual. Do the next right thing. That's RTE in a phrase. And then I just thought of, we're minting these coins that have RTE on The front and just tiny little coins that have RTE on the front. And then the cardinal virtues, we do use discipline. I used to use self mastery, but discipline as a derivation of devotion and then a lot of courage. So these virtues are on the back with RT on the front. I can't personally wait to have it. I of course, put a little something something on my wrist around my arm, so I don't forget it. So, yeah, I've got a pretty stark reminder, but we've got about three minutes. If I recall correctly. Your we talked a lot about work, so creativity. I feel like we did a great job. I want to go to love. What's the number one practice that you've learned? Theoretical distinction that you've applied to your life that has had the deepest impact in your life in terms of expressing and experiencing love? Wow.

This will be a kind of a sideways answer because it's what comes up for me. I was your average, arrogant, grandiose, narcissistic young man. You didn't matter to me. I mattered to me. But you didn't matter to me then. In that retooling process and becoming a therapist, the very first class that one had to take was a pre class. It was before the therapy program began and it was a class in listening. I'm not sure I'd ever listened to anybody previously about anything but there. You had to learn, you had to. You had to listen or not pass. And I think that was a turning point. Probably I was primed for other kinds of turning points at that moment, but that was a turning point to have to sit there and not only listen, but give back what I heard, value what the person was saying, not translate it into some other language or start to problem solve, but just to hear it. I'm not sure if I'm on point in my own mind in this second if whether this is about love or not, but it does feel like a prerequisite to love. Or part of the picture of loving is listening. And the other piece. And this ties all the way back to the beginning of our conversation about resistance fighter. I've always thought of a couple as a subversive unit in enemy territory. So I've always thought of a couple as we have to hang. It's not me and it's not you. We have to hang together in this difficult environment because it's always a difficult environment. Fascism is always coming back. Stuff is always happening. It's always a difficult environment. So we have to be this unit. So this sense of partnership for me is A. Not sure if that's love or a different word, but these are just some of the random ideas of what comes up for me. Listening and partnership.

Beautiful. Oh, that's so good. Perfect. Bless you.

Let me just say. I just let me get the number right. I don't want to get the number wrong. My wife and I have been together 47 years, so that's a pretty good sized number.

Oh, bless you. And that's my number one target I hit every day is to be worthy of being with my wife for 51 years. So I. I celebrate you. I. That certainly has been a heroic challenge at times, I'm sure, but the two of you doing your resistance, fighting together. Alexander, I feel exactly the same way. She had a coaching session this morning and, you know, we homeschool our kids. We're raising little iconoclasts, heroic little kids. How do they go out? And in order to do that, you got to be willing to step outside of the cultural norms and literally wage a heroic battle. Mindfully, gracefully, lovingly. So beautiful. Wonderful answer. Listening and partnership. Just gorgeous. I appreciate you so much. Thank you for having such a deep impact on me and my work and being here with us today. I look forward to continuing the conversation. Nat, please share with everyone where they can connect with Eric.

But.

But tell us now just. We have it on recording. Eric, what's the best place for them to learn more about you and your work?

Ericmaisel.com Eric M A I S E L.com just to name some things, there's an Eric Maisel community starting in October that'll be an interesting place. And I also have a new big certificate and diploma program for creativity coaches. So lots going on. So just come to my site. A lot is going on.

Yeah, there is 50 plus books worth and all the other things. Again, one of the most beautifully prolific human beings who have inspired me to see if I can keep up with your brisk pace. So wonderful to see you. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.

Thank you, Brian.

Your devotion, your love, your courage, your gratitude, your hope, your curiosity and your zest. Have a great rest of the day.

Same to you. Bye for now.

See you. All right, heroes, we're back. Let's go. Don't call it a comeback. We got the coaching yesterday. We've got Eric on today. That was super fun. I forget who we have. Let me look at my calendar to see. We've got a. A bigger. Oops. It's on my little screen over there, which I can kill. So let me do that. I want to make sure we get a little headway. So we got a session next week with Nat. Do you have that in front of you? Huh? Oh, wait, there it is. We have. Oh, no way. Awesome. We've got Mike Menazer, Top gun pilot, Navy admiral, with whom I traded some text just yesterday. Beautiful human being. He wrote, weed yourself or leader?

Weed.

Learn how to lead to win. Super cool guy. Introduced to him by another friend of mine who is a captain in the US Navy, Daryl Cardone, who I now can actually say his name out loud. Captain Cardone, if you are watching this on replay. Bless you, brother. Learn how to lead to win. Mike Menozer, Friday. It's going to be a great chat. This was Captain Cardone's mentor when he was an admiral before he retired. Two star admiral, super cool human being. Great book. That's Friday. We'll be back tomorrow. Road edition, Chess tournament edition. Informal. We'll have fun with that. And we're back. That's what I got. Nat. Nat's voice is compromised, so let me help. If you would like to stay, then please do stay. And Nat will do the administrative coordination if you don't get out of here. Actually, let's flip the switch. We'll flip the switch real quick. One breath. In a moment, you're back in that room that Eric talked about. Mark Divine has the same thing. He wants you to have a place you go. To connect to your best, most heroic self. See it, feel it. Live from that place as we move from theory to practice to mastery together today. Let's go, heroes. Nat, if you are open to sharing the number one thing that you learned today and how you can move from theory to practice to mastery, that would be awesome. If you can say your Soul Force score and where you're from, first name. How'd I do, Nat? Was that pretty good?

That was perfect.

All right, cool. Great to see you and see you all soon.