PNTV: The Creativity Book by Eric Maisel (#208)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, another great book, the Creativity Book. The Creativity Book by Eric Maisel. Eric Maisel is one of the world's leading creativity coaches and psychotherapists who works with artists and authors and other creative individuals and is just an extraordinarily creative person in his own right. He's written a ton of books. We worked together with our old academy at Entheos and I was always blown away by every interaction. He was just on top of it and embodies these ideals that he shares. So this book is a year long guidebook on how to get your creativity on. I loved it. Philosopher's Note Bunch of big ideas. Let's look at five of my favorite ones now. First big idea. We need to realize that creativity and anxiety go together. They coexist. Good luck creating anything meaningful without having a healthy dose of anxiety. And in my past, my biggest problem, or one of my biggest problems was that I thought that something was wrong with me because I had anxiety or stress or fear or whatever, as I wanted to do something in my life, created whatever it was. And just the simple understanding that all people we admire have had and do have anxiety and fear and other issues that we have and they can tend to get in the way. Steven Pressfield says the amateur waits until they get rid of their anxiety and then they start. They get rid of the fear, then they start. And guess what? They never do so they never start. The professional, he says, realizes that's part of the game. It's all about learning to deal with our fear and our anxiety in a productive, creative manner and then doing what needs to get done. Pressfield shares stories about Henry Fonda, who, in his 70s, I think it was, was throwing up before each stage performance. Now, if he waited until he got over that, he never would have done anything. But Pressfield says what did he do after he threw up, cleaned himself up, went on stage and performed. So we want to embrace the fact that creativity and anxiety go together. It's a big idea. That's the first big idea. And of course cultivate the skills so we can handle it with more grace and with more poise, with more ease. But don't think that something's wrong with you because you have that experience. As David Reynolds says, one of my favorite quotes, David Reynolds says, anyone who says they're never afraid is both stupid and lying. We all have fear, not a big deal. And particularly those of us who are on a creative, creative path. Second big idea. Chunking. Chunking. Really cool idea. So Mazel tells us a story about the fact that I think it was either this book or another book he was writing. 80,000 word book. Now if he sits there and thinks about the fact that he has an 80,000 word book to complete and he's got a couple of other major projects going on that have other deadlines that are looming, if that's what he's focused on, this anxiety is going to go through the roof. Now there's a healthy amount of it, then there's more than we need. And what he does is he chunks it down. So rather than think about the 80,000 word book he needs to write, he thinks about the 800 word chapter. Huh? 800 word chapter. I can put that together and I can do another 800 word chapter. In another 800 word chapter, you chunk that huge project down into little micro projects. You can achieve some extraordinary things. We talked about this in Spartan Up. Joe Disena says our minds can't handle an iceberg of pain. So whether it's a 26.2 mile marathon or a X hundred mile endurance race over X number of days, he says you can't think about that. You can't think about the 80,000 word book. You got to think about the next telephone pole. Just get to the next telephone pole, chunk it down into the tiniest little step you can and go crush that and go crush that and go crush that. And over time, in aggregate, you'll hit your goal by focusing on the process and the little things in between. Chunking is a really, really big idea, something that I love doing. If I sit here and think about all the philosopher's notes I want to do, when I do, and I think about that too much is when this gets up. But if I think about, hey, today I'm going to do one more book, I'm going to read this chapter. I'm going to get to page 100. If I'm on page 82, I like to get to let's get to 100 before you stop this reading session or whatever. Little baby steps day in and day out lead to great things. So what's chunk? Third big idea, Shells and omelets. So Joseph Campbell says, you can't make an omelet without breaking the eggs. Eric takes it a step further and says, and sometimes when you're making those omelets, you're going to get shells there, cracking open the eggs. You're going to get some shells in your omelets. We're going to make mistakes. Not a Big deal. I love the way that Michael Beckwith frames it. He says, a mistake is actually a mistake is actually just a mistake. Not a big deal. If you're filming a movie, as I say often, you're not going to go from the first scene action to the end of the movie cut, we're done. Each scene needs to be reshot until you get it right. It's a mistake. So as creative individuals, we do ourselves a lot of good when we embrace that fact that we're going to make mistakes. We've made mistakes in the past. As Paulo Coelho says, we can look at our scars as metals. Those tough times in our lives when we fell down and we didn't achieve what we wanted to achieve, or we made mistakes, those are the times that we could be most proud of. In hindsight, that. And then we know that going forward, we're not done making mistakes. Of course we're going to make mistakes. We're creative human beings playing at our edges. By definition, we're going to fall down on occasion. No big deal. Get up, take another take and make some new omelettes, scoop out those shells and get to the next one. Fourth big idea here. Eric goes off in one of my favorite passages in any book, really, that I capture in the Philosopher's Note, he talks about the fact that as creative individuals, we have huge desire. And he says, we need to want everything. We need to be honest with ourselves about what we want to create in our lives, not play small and pretend that we don't have these huge aspirations. Own it, Go for it. And he says, well, does that go contrary to Eastern thoughts, that you don't want to have these strong desires, that that's going to lead to suffering? He says, yep, exactly. It does points us back to rule number one. Creativity in its most authentic sense goes with anxiety. You can't separate the two. And you're not going to live a meaningful, engaged life by diminishing your desire and your desire to create something extraordinary of deep meaning. Today I'm working on this morning I was reading the Upside of Stress. I'll be sharing more on that soon. But the idea here is not to get rid of your stress. It's to learn that it's actually super beneficial in different ways. And we want to own our desires, own our vision. So what's your vision? When you sit down and you're in a good spot, you're rested, and you've got that little angel on your shoulder who's got a magic wand and you and this wonderful angel can create your ideal. What's it look like? What is your ideal? If you can look forward five years, you've worked hard, you've achieved what you wanted to achieve. Things fell into place. What's your life look like in five years? Get clear on that. Get excited about it. Realize that there's going to be the ups and downs in the pursuit of that and go for it. One to everything is the fourth big idea. Fifth big idea is a great way to close the gap between that ideal and where you are now. Eric says we need to create a new mantra. Oftentimes when we're about ready to get to work, we've got all this doubt and fear and this little dialogue going on in our head where this anxiety gets too loud. And he says we just need to go to work. We need to have a mantra to ourselves. Whether it's when you wake up in the morning and if you go straight to work on your creative projects before checking your email and all that stuff. Or maybe you do it like I do. Of course you meditate. I do a little bit of yoga and then I get to work. I'm going to work. Work is another way he distills the mantra. Work. Just start. Ignore this little dialogue that's going on in your head and get to work. We talked about this in Tall Ben Shahar's great book, choose the Life youe Want, dealing with procrastination. Five minute onboard. Just get to work. Get those first five minutes in and you'll be blown away by but what you can get done. And when you combine that with a little chunk, you know what you want to get done today. Whether it's 100 words or 200 words or 500 words or 800, whatever it is for you, that's that chunk. Get to work on it. Ignore this voice. Get to work. In pursuit of what you want. You embrace the fact that you're going to get A, you need to break the eggs to make omelets. B, you're going to get shells in those omelets on occasions and it has nothing to do with you. It has to do with the process, chunking, creativity, anxiety that go together. That's a super quick look at this great book. Eric's awesome and I look forward to sharing more on his stuff. We've got a couple other notes in the queue. I'll show more on that soon. In the meantime, hope you enjoyed and have another awesome day. See you.