Fredrik Härén: Why Your Best Ideas Come When You Stop Trying

Today, I'm joined by Fredrik Harren, bestselling author and global expert on creativity, who has spent a quarter of a century studying how some of the world's most creative people think. We explore why creativity isn't something you're born with, but how to create conditions for your best ideas to emerge. And also, we'll look at why the highest performers don't chase every opportunity. They know when to seize the right one. Let's dive in. Fredrik, a huge welcome to the Habits of High Performers podcast. How are you doing?

I'm great. How are you?

I'm even better because I get to chat about creativity. And I get to chat about creativity with the world leader on creativity. You've wrote over 10 books. Is it 12 books now?

Yes.

Okay. Mind-blowing. Most people talk about writing their first book and they get to 70 and never do. You've authored a dozen books. Phenomenal. And many of them bestsellers. So creativity. I personally was told you're either a creative person or you're not. And you've got a creative part of your brain and some people can use it and other people can't. My thoughts and feelings are that creativity can be learned and that it can be a habit that we build and develop. Now, I'm going to throw it to you and you might say, James, you're full of nonsense. But what's your thoughts on what is creativity and can it be a learned habit?

Yeah. Okay. Well, I've been studying the topic for 25 years, so I guess I wouldn't be teaching it if I didn't think it could be taught. So definitely it can be taught. I do not think— okay, let's start to humble this down a bit. Edward de Bono, I think, has written like 98 books on creativity or something. So I'm not the world leader. Edward de Bono is the world leader on creativity. But What I do differently is I go around the world and interview creative people. And what I've learned by doing this for 25 years, thousands of creative people, is there's no one way of being creative. So, you need to find yours. I'm absolutely convinced every human being is creative and has potential to become much more creative. And that is the interesting question to ask. How do I become more creative every day? Wake up and ask that question.

That's beautiful. And I guess for me, when I think of my values, I'm really clear that the value that I lean into the most is curiosity.

Yes.

And I want to learn, and I'm by no means an expert. And I think of being a learn-it-all versus a know-it-all. And so, I guess that's how I believe. As a teenager, I was a know-it-all, and it wasn't very comfortable or fun. So, how do we become more curious, and how does that lead to more creativity?

I totally agree with you. I'm 100% behind you. I think curiosity is the number one thing to become more creative. And I love curiosity. I've actually studied— so, okay, let me share. The word curiosity is different in different languages and they all tell us something about it. So, for example, curious in English, the etymological root is Cura, which is connected to care, which means that which you care about, you will be curious about. If you go on a date and you don't care about the date, you're not gonna be curious. Yeah. Right. So that's the connections.

Makes sense.

So if you wanna be more curious, figure out what you care about. Right. So let's say I, I did a speech for students, uh, 5 years ago and I said, I don't, I don't care what you study, study AI. Right. And some students say, I don't like, I don't care. I don't like AI. I say, I don't care. If you like horses, study how will AI affect horse breeding. If you like advertising, study how will AI affect advertising. Now you're studying something that you like, but you are also studying AI. So that's the lesson of curiosity from English. In Icelandic, it's called forvitten. For, totally different word. For meaning before, vitten meaning to know, meaning that which comes before knowledge. You cannot— so any teacher, the most important role they have is to awaken the curiosity of its students. Because when, if they're not curious, they cannot learn. And curiosity is what makes us learn. And then in Bulgarian, it's called Lupiten, which means that poetically translates into the one who loves to ask questions.

The curious one. I love that.

Yeah. And I define myself as the creativity explorer and not a creativity expert. And I'm 100% aligned with you because an expert has all the answers. An explorer per definition doesn't have any answers. But it has all the questions. I wonder what's on the other side.

Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. caroline@jjlaughlin.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes. That's beautiful. It's interesting. In the business world, I see a lot of people on LinkedIn and they call themselves the real estate expert, the financial markets expert. And I'm like, oh, so they have nothing else to learn. Like, they're the world-leading, all-knowing human on this topic. And I like the word strategist, or as you say, an explorer, somebody who's willing to say, I don't have all the answers, but I'm keen to find them out.

I don't know. Yeah. The definition of explore, to venture into unknown territory in order to learn more about it. Now that's it. That's exciting.

It's beautiful.

I interviewed a musician in Indonesia. He's been like number one. He's like a producer, an artist. He writes me, he composes. I said, which of these titles do you put? He said, I put a student of music. That's what I am. That's my title.

It was beautiful. That is so lovely. And that great degree of humility as well. Yeah, it's interesting. I was in Antarctica delivering some training last year and again this year.

Hey, I'm jealous.

Hey, we need to get you down there. That's where you need to be for sure. You could add a lot of value. But I really appreciated the idea of exploring. When I was getting ready for the trip, I started to do a little bit of research. And not too far from you, it's a Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen. He was the very first to get to the South Pole.

Yep.

And I just— explorers fascinate me because they're so courageous. They feel the fear, but they kind of do it anyway. So why do you keep doing it? You've been doing it for 25 years. Some of our listeners, You might have been doing it when they were probably just born. And some of our listeners are older too. But why? Why for a quarter of a century have you continued to explore and get into new territory?

Well, okay, there, I guess there are many different answers. There are many different answers to that question. One is I grew up in a family where creativity was celebrated. My father was a very creative musician. He could play 10 instruments, but I didn't have a I just can't. I'm not musical. I can't, you know, I'm not very good with music. So I grew up with creativity is apparently important, but I don't know how to do it. So that's where it started. But then when I became older, I realized, okay, so I'm not creative in music, but maybe I can be creative in other ways. And I realized my way of being creative is seeing the world in a different place and describing it to others. That's what I'm good at. And then I should be creative within that, right?

Hmm.

But then, the more I interview creative— and to be fair, I mean, I interviewed thousands of creative people. And the more I do this, the more I realize that creativity is what makes us happy. Nothing makes us happier than being creative except love. And love beats everything, right? But apart from love, I challenge you, give me a human emotion or give me a situation in a human's life that makes us more happy than when we have the best idea of our lives Or when our best idea in our lives becomes a reality, like I wanna write this book and then you publish the book, like that joy is not beaten by anything except love. So, and that just shows you, but if you think about this and you think, and the side effect is by doing that, we solve humanity's problems. Like why on earth would we not invest more time and energy and resources into reaching our full creative potential? That's, uh, that, that's the myth. That's the question that haunts me.

Yeah, it's a great argument. And I think it's one that we do definitely need to lean into. And I go back to my childhood and my passion was drumming and nobody in my family had played instruments before. And I loved it. It was an escape and it was about discipline and habits. And all I wanted to do was win the world championships. And everything in my little 10, 11-year-old brain was, how do you win? And what do you have to do? And who's the best currently? It made me be very creative. I was in a small working-class town in Ireland, and I had to figure out what was happening. We had cassette tapes. We didn't have YouTube. And getting these cassette tapes and playing them, and sometimes they didn't work, but I was really creative in my pursuit of trying to win that world championship. And there was a lot of joy that came from that, for sure. Now, I feel I'm maybe a little less creative than I was when I was a kid. And I definitely feel that this thing, the old phone and social media, has played a part in distracting me. And I'm not blaming social media. I'm responsible for where I place my focus, right? I gotta take responsibility. But I would love to know, are there daily habits, routines, or rituals, things that we can do to create an environment where we can be more creative?

Well, yes, the answer is yes. And most— the interesting observation here is that most people have never sat down and done that. They've never— this is— I highly recommend if anyone wants to improve their lives and also become more creative, answer these questions. Question number 1, what's the best idea I've ever had in my life? What's the worst idea I've ever had in my life? When was my creativity the lowest? When was my creativity the highest? What inspires my crea— like, crea— questions like this. Put all of that in and then put it into ChatGPT, ask it to summarize, uh, and then do it yourself and try to describe what's the perf— and okay, imagine you have no budget or strengths and someone comes and gives you 3 wishes and even with a wand and you, nothing is impossible. What would your perfect creative process look like?

Mm-hmm.

And then look at that and dis— and see what can you learn from this? So, mine is I'm an introvert, but I need to meet new people. That's the observation. I need to be bombarded by different kinds of inspiration. So, as I told you, the last 10 days, I've been to Maldives, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangkok, Pakistan, and home. I met all kinds of amazing creative people, a heart surgeon, an advertising executive, a painter, and I've interviewed them. Like, because I want to understand how they approach creativity, a hotel manager and so on. But then I go back and you can see here, I live on a private island. Like I have my own island. I don't, I don't like neighbors. I want to be— I love it. What do you call that? A moat in English, right? Yes. I need a moat where, where I, the island is a, is a, is a natural moat. I need to be able to control who comes and visits me. I want to be by my—

Beautiful.

I wanna be by myself. And so, I don't know, about 5 months a year, I travel like crazy, 15 to 35 countries per year. And the rest of the year, I sit on an island with my family and my dog, and I just sit in this geometric dome and I just reflect and think. To me, this is the perfect creative environment because I get so much inspiration, but I also get so much time to just sit and think and reflect and look at the ocean. For some people, that sounds like heaven. For some people, it sounds like hell. Like, I could never live on an island or I could never travel. I hate travel, right? But for me, I built my perfect creative environment and it has made me so much more creative. But what is yours? Answer that question and I promise you, your creativity will spike and your quality of life will spike.

That makes total sense. And it's interesting, Fredrik. I have a similar life to you in some ways where I'm speaking often and meeting small rooms up to thousands of people in a room. But after that experience, which is a privilege, I want to come back to a very quiet space. And we've chose to live in a very small town. There's like 3,000 people here. It's on the hill overlooking the ocean. Nobody bothers me. And I love it.

Yeah.

I love the seclusion and I could journal all day and I could read all day. Meditate, no problem.

And I find that— Go ahead.

No, go ahead.

No, because a lot of people misunderstand. You know what you call these entrepreneurs? What do you call them? The ones that always go to all the conferences, but they never do anything, right? Inspiration literally means to breathe in. To inspire is to breathe in, right? So, people say, oh, if I'm not inspired, I can't create. Yeah, sure. But if you always inspire, you die. You need to breathe out.

It's true.

That's so good. Creativity is to breathe out, is to create something, to express yourself. So, breathe in, get inspired, and then turn it off. And then, sit and think and create something and bring that out to the world. And then, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. That's the strategy.

That's beautiful. I've never heard it put like that. And I remember times in my life when I was in a career and I'd been doing it for a long time and I wanted to transition. So, I started reading books and books and books. Going to events, getting coaches who were then selling me the next coaching package and the next learn this. And I was doing no breathing out. I was inspiring, as you say, constantly, but taking no action, not giving myself a chance to actually execute or try things. And I think greatness is where you take time to breathe out. Breathe in, inspire, and then take the time to breathe it out.

Wait, sorry. I need to say this too, because this is what I learned in the Maldives. I talked to this guy who runs a luxury resort there. And he talked about creative respiration. So inspiration is to breathe in, but the respiration is what happens in your lungs that turns the oxygen into something useful in the blood. So inspiration is actually meaningless, but creative respiration is everything. Respiration means what do you do with your inspiration?

That's powerful. What do we do when we are inspired? Because let's say someone comes and sees Fredrik speak in New York or wherever on a big stage and they go, whoa, I'm inspired by Fredrik. How do they get the respiration happening? How can they then convert that to something useful?

Yeah, exactly. So, it's not the job of the oxygen. It's the job of the body, right? So, that's your job. Your job is to figure out not what inspires— most people say, what inspires me? That's a meaningless question. Well, what respires me is what you should ask, meaning what kind of inspiration makes me do useful things?

Yeah, that's so interesting. What is it for you?

Well, for me, it's— the respiration is meeting different kinds of people like that, but to talk to them about what makes them creative. I like to say, if I write books about football, it doesn't mean I'm a good football player. It means I'm fascinated about football. I don't look at myself as the most creative person on the planet, but I want to meet the most creative person on the planet and I want to learn from them. So to meet inspiring people and to get them to teach me something practical about creativity is my aspiration. I need to get something out of it. I need to learn a new lesson.

Yeah, that's beautiful. And the brain, the mind, is it a muscle in terms of creativity? Can we atrophy? Can that muscle get weak if we avoid creative pursuit and thinking? Is it something we can build strength in as well?

Well, okay, maybe because I was in Nepal 2 days ago, but the true creativity doesn't come from the brain. The true creativity comes from somewhere else, which is very like the best ideas that humans have are not from the brain. They come to the brain. Someone called it a divine idea. It doesn't mean it has to be God. It just means it comes from outside of the best idea I ever had. came to me in a dream. And I would never say it came from my brain. It came to my brain. So, I look at the best ideas to think of creativity as a firefly. You just need to sit and be so in nature that the firefly is not threatened by you. And then, a firefly comes to you. You don't chase a firefly. So, if you want to have really, really good ideas, that's where you should go. That's so good. Yeah. Those are the best ones.

I love that. It's interesting because people talk about, have creative time and sit down for 30 minutes a day. And I like this idea of stop chasing the big idea, stop forcing it. In fact, let go, totally let go and create space for things to come to you.

Yeah. And also, I was in Bhutan recently and I interviewed a person there and he said, you Westerners, you're obsessed with creativity. You think creativity is expressing yourself, getting something into the world, You know, making the world better. I said, that's the side effect. The pure meaning of creativity is to understand yourself. It's an inward journey, not an outward journey. I think that's beautiful. And I would go now, I would like to say, you cannot, if you do something and by doing that, if you do something creative and by doing that, you don't learn something profound about yourself, was it even creative?

That's powerful. Is there any, Anything else you've learned in the Bhutans and the Nepals about what highly creative people do that would surprise the Western audience? Yes.

Thailand. I was in Thailand. That was a year, a couple of years ago. But I interviewed a woman, an origami woman. This is my favorite, one of my favorite stories. We were talking about creative— she does beautiful origami flowers. Her name is Kai. And she said, and we started talking about creative blocks. You know how we writers block these kind of blocks, and she was totally not understanding what I was speaking about. And it turned out she had no concept of creative block, like it didn't exist for her. And because in her in the Thai culture, they have this sabai sabai mentality, which means don't worry, it it will happen when it will happen. So when she has a block, she just stands up, leaves the studio, and goes and does something else. Which we also do, except we have anxiety during that. She has zero anxiety. She called it beautifully an idea nap, like a power nap. So, you're tired. You take a power nap and you don't have anxiety for being tired. You just sleep for 20 minutes to go back. An idea nap is when you get stuck, just stand up, go out, enjoy life, drink your Starbucks coffee, and then have an idea nap and then go back and continue your work. After meeting her, I don't have creative anxiety anymore. I just realized it's okay. You can have it if you want. Anxiety is a choice. Creative anxiety is a choice. And my life is way much better without it. So I decided not to have creative anxiety and I don't have it anymore.

That's incredible. It's just a decision you've made and your reality has changed because your perception around anxiety and napping and all these kind of blocks that you would have, that's changed.

Yeah, it's kind of like saying, oh, the sun is setting and oh shit, the sun is down, we don't have light anymore. You can decide to have anxiety every night because the sun is setting, or you can say it's okay, it's going to rise tomorrow again, and we don't have anxiety about the sun rising again. It will happen again. So, but, and if, but if your creative process is I need anxiety, my best ideas have happened to me when I'm extremely anxious, Edvard Munch or whatever, Fine, have anxiety, but you don't have to have it. It's a choice.

Yeah, that's beautiful. And it's interesting, I think of the brain. We've been taught that it's a memory device and we store things. But my understanding is that we're not, the brain's not that well equipped for memory storage. It can do it, but what it's masterful at is creation and creativity. Would that be fair?

Well, I'm happy you say that 'cause I have zero memory. Like, I don't remember things. I don't remember my classmates' names. names when I was in school. I don't, had hardly no childhood memories. I don't remember my wedding day. Like I have, I don't remember face or names. I, my brain is not, definitely not a memory machine. But I love it because my, my theory is 100 years ago in Sweden, nostalgia was a disease. You, the doctor would give you medicine if you, because you were living in the past, you were not living in the moment. So I think creativity, if you live in the moment, you will have better ideas. And so that's my excuse for not having a memory.

That's brilliant. I love it. It's interesting. What I think of Stockholm, and this is probably showing my age in the genre of music I listen to, but Avicii, Tim, I can't remember his last name, but Avicii. I followed him for years. And I think in my mind, a kind of a creative genius in a lot of ways musically. And I've never had a chance to really get close to the people that were around him to understand what he did to get creative. But clearly you live in Stockholm, which is a relatively large city, but you have created a sanctuary. You've created your own Menlo Park, your own kind of laboratory, a private island. How can we do that? How can we create environments like yourself and Da Vinci in a busy environment? Let's say someone's listening who's in a city. Is there simple things we can do to create little islands of presence?

Yeah. And I think to be serious for a while, I guess Avicii did not create that, right? Because he killed himself and he killed himself because he hadn't put up a moat around himself and people around him were pushing him too much. And he should have done, the people around him should have noticed that this guy needs some space and some time. In order if we're gonna keep this, you know, this gold mine keep creating. So it's a very sad example of what happens when you don't put up a creative moat around yourself to protect your creativity.

So such a beautiful way to put it. Thank you for saying that.

Yeah. And then what should we do? Well, I literally got my own island, but you don't, I guess instead of saying, how do I get my own island? The answer to that is move to Sweden because we have 25% of all the islands in the world. But How do I create a metaphorical island? What is my metaphorical island or symbolic island? I guess that is the answer. But again, for some people, that's the answer. For some people, it's not. Some people are more like the Apollo 13 kind of people. They need deadlines. They need a catastrophe. They need some kind of a challenge. They need something, a problem to solve. That's what makes them thrive. So, I'm not that person. But about 5% are like that.

And Some companies will say, we need to have creativity days. We need to get out of the office and go to somewhere beautiful, be creative. Is there any research to back that up?

Well, it's not wrong to go and change your location and take a day off and do something different. That is actually great. But again, it's not enough. It's like, I don't know, it's like What's the equivalent to say, oh, we need to go and eat once every 100 days. We need to go and eat. You need to eat every day. So it's much more important to build daily creative habits than to have a creative day once every 3 months. And to give people the, again, give them the space and time to do whatever makes, whatever their creative process is. I like to say, I have to like that. Where do you have your best ideas? And a lot of people say toilet, right? I get my best ideas on the toilet. That's the Archimedes type of people. I need to be in the bath or the shower and the toilet. And I go to them, okay, go to your boss, tell them you need your own toilet with your name on it. I need to be allowed to sit on the toilet as long as I want. And everyone laughs, but I'm serious.

That's brilliant.

Yeah.

Yeah. For me, it's interesting. The shower is a very inspiring place. I've had lots of ideas. Weirdly, just as I'm falling asleep, just before sleep, and just as I wake up, like the 2 or 3 minutes, I've got this little space where wild things come into my mind. Is there any research around the brainwave states?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is exactly— that's when you have the different levels of energy waves and you want to go down at the lowest ones. And you know, you have these stories about, was it, who was it? Edison was holding a metal ball in his hand so that when he fell asleep, it would fall down. And he wanted to be right in that space between dreaming and being awake. It's beautiful. And it, for most people, it's, it's a magical place of creativity. Not for everyone, but for, for, for a lot of people it is. My best idea, as I said, came in a dream, in a nightmare, actually.

What was that idea, if you mind sharing?

It was an idea for a movie, or it's a story. It's a story about invisible human beings living next to us. It became a novel on Penguin. It's called The Invisible. I'm very proud to say I was number— you're an author. I was number 1 on Amazon in Singapore of all books, 15 million books. I was number 1. That was a dream come true for an author. I beat the Bible and Harry Potter.

That's amazing.

Then it crashed. But for one week, I was number one.

Wow, that's so cool. Well done.

Well done. I don't call it my idea. I wanted it to say The Invisible as told to Fredrik Harren, not by Fredrik Harren, because it's not my idea. It was given to me by something. I don't know what. And then the one who named it a divine idea is a sculptor in Hong Kong, which I interviewed. And he said, the divine ideas are always beautiful. And my story is absolutely beautiful message in it. So the ideas that come from that state where we are not consciously trying to be creative, they are always the most beautiful ideas. In Dutch, they call it schoonheid, which is their word of beauty, which is not just the English word of beauty is terrible because it just talks about something being Nice to look at. That's the etymology. But shineit or in Swedish skönhet means beautiful, but it means pure, bright, like a light. And that's much more. That's the kind of beauty we should go for, not the not the one that is just pure white light. That beauty.

I'll put a link in the show notes actually for anyone that wants to go and get that book, and I'll put a link also to your website.

Up to number one again.

Yeah, exactly. Let's make it number one again. Hundred percent. I'll I'll be buying a copy after this. Has that came back again? So that was your best idea. Have you had other messages brought to you from the divine or the universe?

Well, on different levels. But this idea is like what I like to explain to people. That's the purpose of my life. That idea, creativity. Oh, but how about creativity? No, no, no. That's what I do. But that idea was the one that had that if I die or when I die, that was the idea that had to come out. It took me 10 years to write that novel, but I just had to write it. That's beautiful.

And are you open to the fact that there could be another idea that comes to you that is even greater?

Oh yeah, but again, I'm not going to chase it, right?

Yes, good.

Yeah, one beautiful firefly came to me. Am I open to the fact that another one might come? Oh, definitely, 100%. But I'm not going to chase it because chasing it, That would be like lighting a torch trying to find another firefly. And that's exactly how you push them away.

Yeah.

So yeah, I'm totally— having had one of these, and you don't have— most people never have an idea like that, just to be honest. And that doesn't mean they're not creative or that they didn't have creative ideas. There's different— the problem with ideas, we only have one word for it. But we also have all these wonderful ideas where people do use their conscious mind and say, I don't know, Invent whatever they invent, right? In a lab or sweating it out to create a business book or whatever. That's also creativity. There's so many different kinds of creativity. We should cherish all of them.

That's beautiful.

Okay, I'll give you one more though, because I'm on an island, right? I have my own private island. It's the most central private island in Stockholm. I'm 18 minutes from the freaking train station, central train station in Stockholm, but I'm middle of nowhere. But how did I get that idea? I woke up in the middle of the night and I said to myself, I'm going to own an island. But then I went online and I started looking for islands and it was in the middle of winter. It was like end of November. No one sells an island in November in Sweden because that's our winter. Ice. That's our winter. It is cold, ice, snow. So no one sells an island, but I went looking anyway. Right. And this island was for sale. And it turns out I was the only person looking for it. I was the only person bidding on it. There was no bidding. I got it under market price. The real estate agent was on my side. He didn't want to go out there one more time. If the seller would have waited 6 months, he would have gotten at least 3 times what I paid for it.

Well done.

And more importantly, there would have been a bidding war because there are extremely few central islands like this. So, what was the creativity here? Was it the fact that I woke up in the middle of the night and said, I'm going to own an island? Or was it the fact that I took the opportunity to say, you know what? I'm going to look at this now even though no one else is looking. And that was a conscious decision. So, that was a conscious idea from my mind. But I decided to act on it. I had to throw this in because you talk about high performance, right?

Yes.

I need to say this before we quit. I am the opposite of a high performer. I am an introvert. I'm lazy. I'm a procrastinator. It's like I'm all the things the high performer is not. And yet, I've been able to build a global speaking career and have bestselling books. And how do I do it? It's a mystery. And the answer is I am a master at seizing opportunities. That's my key. So, a lot of people will wake up and say, I'm going to own an island. And they'll say, okay, in the next summer, I'll look for it. But I decided to look right there and then. And I saw it was for sale. And I decided to go out and look at it even though I had to rent an expensive taxi boat just to see it. Even though the real estate agent said, no, I don't know if we can go out. Is it okay if you just look at the pictures? No, I want to go out. I decided right there and then, drop everything and just go for it. Take the action. And if you do that, if you have the skill and the determination to seize opportunities, you will run circles around the hustlers.

It's so interesting. I'm going to send you a copy of my book. So my definition of high performance in the studies that I've done with whether it's people I'm coaching that are prime ministers, Formula 1 guys, they're running big business, it doesn't matter. The people that are the most successful, they don't hustle. And the whole theme of this book is I am the anti-hustle guy. And I think most people are like, to be a high performer, you've got to be burnt out and go a million miles a minute. I disagree. I think you've got to get really clear on what you want and then develop some habits and do small little steps. Not this take massive action that some of the big keynote speakers will tell you you must take to be successful. Take small steps and keep doing them and be consistent. So I love the fact that you say you're not a hustler and that something came to you and you took some action. That's beautiful.

Okay. But then I do not take small steps and I don't have habits. That's where we are different. So, what I do is, my favorite animal is the lion. You know what the lion does? 21 hours a day, they do 2 things.

Sleep?

And have sex.

That's it. There you go. I know what you're up to on your island. You're having lots of naps.

Sleep. They have a lot of sex and they sleep a lot. 21 hours a day. 3 hours a day, they hunt.

That's excellent.

And most of the time that they hunt, they're just slowly, slowly walking, looking for opportunities. But have you ever seen a cat actually hunt? Like when they lock in on an animal, everything else disappears and then it's like nothing else matters. And they just, and they know they can only run for a few meters, like 50, and then they're tired. So they have to get, then they, and they won't do it unless they know they can catch the animal and then they just run like crazy. So that's my animal. Now, that's not the small steps. It's the sleep and have sex mentality for most of the day. And then when something's, when an opportunity comes, you just drop everything and you just go for it. So do you know the etymology of opportunity? It's, I'm, my favorite etymology word. So opportunity is the name of a wind. You know, a storm, a typhoon, a breeze, different winds have different names. An opportunity is a specific kind of wind.

Wow.

So what kind of wind is it? Well, the Romans, it's from the Roman times. They were out in the middle of the ocean. They were, they were in the doldrums. There were like no wind. They were going to die. And then suddenly here came opportunity, a specific kind of wind. It literally means the wind that takes you home to your harbor. Opportunity. Port means port. The wind that brings you back home to your family. You are going to survive. But it means that in the doldrums, you don't do anything. You don't sail. There's no wind. And then suddenly, here comes opportunity. You drop everything. You wake everyone up. You hoist the sails and you sail like crazy because soon that wind will be gone again. That's what it means. That's where the word comes from. And that's why we say seize the opportunity. I'm not a hustler. I'm a seizer.

That's beautiful. I love that. And the idea that Being creative, being open to those thoughts coming to you, not forcing it. But when they do come, you need to have the sail ready to go and actually—

Wake everyone up, drop everything, and just do it.

That's brilliant. There's a friend of mine who wrote a book called Essentialism. And essentially what he said, pardon the pun, was that most people are on an undisciplined pursuit of more. More money, more houses, more everything. But the true essentialists are on a disciplined pursuit of less. And I get a little bit of that vibe from you. You're not trying to be everything to everyone all of the time. You even said when you travel for your keynotes, you do it in blocks. And that says a lot that you're an essentialist. Please continue to be one.

Yeah, I love it. Beautiful message. I love that. Yeah, I totally agree.

Where can people connect with you? What's the best way for them to connect with your work, your books, your keynotes?

I guess just Google the Creativity Explorer or Google it on LinkedIn. I'm quite active on LinkedIn even though I think the platform is degrading. But sure.

Yeah, I'll put those links in the show notes as well. So, anybody that's listening or watching, those links for Fredrik's LinkedIn, etc., are all in the show notes. Fredrik, I just want to say a huge thank you for what you've done and continue to do. Please continue being creative and exploring. And I look forward to seeing more interviews from all these amazing people you interview around the world. Keep it up.

Well, next time I come to New Zealand, I want to interview you.

Hey, that would be an honor. And next time I come to Stockholm, I want to come to your island.

Oh, you have a standing invitation.

Oh, that's beautiful. I'll take you up on that. Thank you so much, Fredrik. We'll chat soon.

Bye. Thank you.