PNTV: How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci by Michael Gelb (#24)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we're going to do one of my favorite books, a book called how to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci. As always, we've got by Michael Gel. We've got this great book, We've got my 6 page Philosopher's Notes PDF where I profile about 10 of my favorite big ideas from that book. And. And this book was one of the most transformative books of my life. I read it in 2001, shortly after I sold my first business and had left that business with enough to kind of figure out what I wanted to do over one or two years. Took me about three or four or five years to figure out the next step. But this book really inspired me to think big and to figure out how I can get paid to. To do what I love to do. We're going to talk about that exercise that Gelb has and how it kind of opened my consciousness and I hope it does the same for you. So that's pretty exciting. The book is awesome. And I got to meet Michael at an event that he facilitated on Conscious Capitalism with a bunch of CEOs from Whole Foods and Patagonia and Life Is Good. And I snuck in there as the resident philosopher of Philosopher's Notes to talk about how we can create businesses that embody all the ideals that we're passionate about and make a difference in the world. So Michael Gelbaugh facilitated that. It was awesome to connect with him. And I'm excited to share some of my favorite big ideas from this book. So the basic idea here is that Michael Gelb was a passionate student of da Vinci and he wanted to kind of understand what made da Vinci tick. And he identified seven general principles that he believes da Vinci followed that we can follow to live an extraordinary life. And he has fun using the old school Italian on them. But here are the seven principles in the worst Italian I could possibly do. Please forgive me. Number one is curiosita. Right? Curiosita. I don't know how you say that if you're Italian, please help me out. But. But it's basically an insatiably curious approach to life. Da Vinci was incredibly curious. He wanted to understand everything. That's principle number one to how to think like da Vinci. Principle number two is demonstrazione demonstratione. Something to that effect which is embracing experience and what life gives us experientially. Learning from that, challenging ourselves, learning from our mistakes. That's principle number two. The third one is sensazione, this idea of embracing our senses. Right. Especially our sense of sight, which we can do through things like drawing and sketching and developing our sense of taste, etc. So sensazione is the third principle. The fourth one is sfumato, which literally means going up in smoke. It's da Vinci's ability to handle ambiguity of all geniuses have an extraordinary ability to handle ambiguity. The next principle is number five, which is arte scientia. So the balance of art and science, how do we blend those two together? Da Vinci was an incredible scientist and he was an incredible artist. Gelb talks about all the different domains in which da Vinci excelled. It's extraordinary. As he approached his drawing and his painting, for example, there was a science combined with his art. There's an amazing dance there. So we want to blend arte and sciencia. The sixth principle is corporalita, which is our physical body. We have this misconception that geniuses are kind of skinny nerds in glasses, Right? He says, no, the greatest geniuses of all time have been the most vibrant, energetic human beings, and da Vinci is no exception. And in fact, Gelb says he's the quintessential genius in that regard. He was one of the greatest athletes of his time, in addition to being one of the greatest artists, scientists, etc. And the final principle is connezione, this idea of seeing the integration of everything all as one, seeing things as systems. Really big idea. So those are the seven principles we talk about in the note. I'm going to move on now. We go into detail on a few of those in the note. And obviously Gelb goes into detail on each of those seven principles in his great book. So the exercise that totally transformed my life that I hope you do is called 100 Questions. And it goes like this. Create some space for yourself where you have 15, 30, 60. Actually, more like 30, 45, 60 minutes to create a list of 100 questions. So you sit down and you write down 100 questions that come to you. It can be anything from why is the sky blue? Why are trees green? To what is my purpose? And why do I love studying life so much? Or how can I inspire other people to live their greatest lives? Whatever your hundred questions are, write them down. And if you're like me, the first five, 10, 15, 20, even, will kind of flow out. And then you might hit a wall and another wall. But move through those and get your first hundred questions on paper, right? And then look at your hundred questions and see the themes you talk about. Your creative expression, your relationships, your family, your spirituality, all these different things. Kind of come to light thematically. Then what you want to do is go through the hundred questions and write down your top 1010 questions, the most powerful questions for you. This is huge. 1 through 10. So you have 10 questions and then rank order them 1 through 10. Really, really, really powerful exercise. I did that. And in the note, I actually describe and write down and share my 10 questions that I came up with in when was it? On June 8, 2001. And those 10 questions, living now, they've really become kind of the cornerstone of who I am. And just the purpose of my life is addressing these questions. So really, really powerful stuff. Hundred questions themes, top 10 rank ordered 1 through 10. Those questions, I imagine, will shed a lot of light on what's important to you. And then we want to live a life answering and addressing those questions. Then he has a really cool exercise to complement the hundred questions exercise. He has something called the 10 power questions, and he suggests that we contemplate them. In da Vinci's time, he didn't surf the Internet or turn on the tv. He spent a lot more time in quiet contemplation than we do today, bombarded with all the stimuli that we have in our life. So he suggests we contemplate a power question, which can be one of our 10 questions or one of his 10 power questions. The question I contemplated was, how can I get paid to do what I love to do? How can I get paid to do what I love to do? And I literally wrote it down on a piece of paper, and then I poked a hole in it, wove, you know, kind of put a piece of dental floss through that hole and put it on a shower head and took a bath and just looked at the question, how can I get paid to do what I love to do? It was amazing because the first step in that is identifying, well, what do we love to do? I love to study. I love to read. I wanted to figure out how I can get paid to read and become a better human being and hang out with cool people like Michael Gel. And I vividly remember that bath and the journaling that came after that. And it took me about seven, eight years to get to the point where I'm now getting paid to do that in a lot of fits and starts and kind of trial and error. So to get to the point where I now get paid to literally read and write and become a better human being and hang out with cool people like you and all these great authors. So what do you love to do? And how can you get Paid to do it. Really powerful question I encourage you to contemplate. Gelb also talks about the fact that da Vinci had thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of journals. Journal pages. Right. And my question for you is, do you have a journal? I like to whip mine out occasionally. Here's my journal. I don't go anywhere without it. I rarely go anywhere without it. And I always have a piece of paper I can write on to reflect my ideas. If I don't have my journal. So are you journaling? It's a great way to create and capture our ideas. So that's huge. I've got some other big ideas in here we don't have time to get into. He talks about mind mapping. Gel turned me on to the idea of mind mapping. I'm going to link to a video on how I mind map where I go off on that in more detail. He also talks about how da Vinci used affirmations. We talk about that in the note. That's pretty cool. I have a few of my pictures. He encourages us to get into drawing. I never thought I could draw and amazing stuff in this book and in a couple other books I talk about transformed me as an artist and something I actually really enjoy doing now and excited to do more of in my life. And. And then the final big idea here is marrying goals and processes. It's not about having goals but not enjoying the journey or just enjoying the journey and not having goals. We want both. And I talk about it more in the note. We want to have both passionate goal pursuit in our lives and loving every moment. It's all about the yes and always. So that's a really quick look at the book. How to think like Leonardo da Vinci. Hope you loved it. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Bye.