Episode 304: Decide! How to Wake Up Your Subconscious and Find Your Most Exciting Options with Gl...

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell. And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and again, go to Wydell on winning.com webinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode.

Of Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm here with the globe trotting creator of all kind of interesting content, photography, books, videos. You can find him everywhere. He has a huge following. And look him up. Thorsten von Overgaard. Hello, Thorsten. Yep, glad to have you.

That was fun.

Glad to have you on. And we're continuing on our conversation about creativity and we're going to move into kind of getting more specific about deciding. And we've got my good friend and award winning sculptor Jason Mel here. Hey, Jason.

Yeah, nice to meet everyone.

And so let's talk about how you wake up your creativity. You expand. Maybe, you know, you're already creative, you've done some things and you know, that's an ongoing process. If someone is at that point where they just say, I'm not that creative.

Wrong.

You know, let me show you how creative you are. All I've got to do is tell you to do something you don't want to do. And then you get amazingly creative at avoiding that. You've been creative, you learn. If there's anything that children learn right from the start is how to creatively avoid things they don't want to do and then how to creatively get things that they want that their parents won't let them get. So you've been creating your own life, your own life. Don't sell yourself short. But the deal is, why not use that thought process, that thinking to your advantage now, as you're an adult, to really move forward in your life, you know, break out of the box and those restrictions and things like that.

So.

You want to weigh in on that. So we're moving on from just the observing stage to making decisions and deciding and picking something, you know, you got to move from. Like we talked the last time about, do something different, take a different direction, meet some different people, you know, read a different book, do something different. But then look for something that strikes your imagination, but then follow up, you know, go after it, you know, so what would you have to say about that?

So I might add something here. I think it's good to differentiate between thoughts and ideas and having thoughts and ideas and then being fed thoughts and ideas. You need time for both. You can pursue what other People think, pursue different forms of media, read books, but also just having time to process it on your own terms. So Larry's been over to my house before. He's seen my living room. One thing that people notice right away is I have things of inspiration in there, but no television. I do have speakers, and so I will play music there. And I spend a lot of my free time just sitting on my couch with no stimulation visually. And that's a spot where I think. And I might have books out that I'm referencing, but that's not where I'll sit and read. It's just where I think and process. And that helps kind of drive. Drive my own direction. The lets me break down other thoughts that I've picked up.

But why did you set that up? You know, like, there had to be a thought behind you. Like, you know, you were in Aspen for years, and you moved over there because you could be near the foundries and you could get a bigger place, you know, much bigger. Much bigger. And, you know, work out in the yard and not worry about everything being stolen all the time. And so how did you. What was your thought about setting this up around the idea of allowing myself to be creative and think?

So the way I set that up is when I lived in Aspen, I had pretty much two spaces that were an extension of each other. There was no door dividing them. Any process that happened in one space had to share space with other ideas and other processes. Now I've divided my whole house up. I have a thinking area. I have a reading area. I don't particularly have one sleeping area. That can happen anywhere, and it does. Sometimes I'll be thinking I'll fall asleep in that area.

Yeah.

And then with my art itself, I have different sections in the yard. I do gardening. I work on sculptures there. I work on very different sculptures in two other studio spaces in that house. And it allows me to compartmentalize and let things develop in isolation and then bring them back into the bigger thought and the bigger picture later.

Yeah.

So I definitely like focusing on things in isolation, really processing them and then allowing it to be part of something.

So you knew if that location was going to pay off for you, it needed to be set up in a way that would allow you to open up and come up with ideas and then to be able to process them.

And to run with anything at any given time. And some of it's not even based on my art. Some of it's based on the inspiration. I have rooms dedicated to plants. I have sections that are just stones that I find inspiring. And so I can go just sit and focus on something too, and let that feed.

Yeah. Jason's got an amazing knowledge of plants, I think your family or something like that.

Well, so my grandmother garden. My mother, once a spring and once a fall gave me a section of the yard to plant however I wanted.

Yeah. And so a fun thing is to walk through the Denver Botanical Garden with Jason telling you what you're seeing. To me, it's just plants, but he actually knows what they are. And so when you're hearing that stuff, Thorsten, I can see your wheels spinning and expanding on this. Talk about what comes to your mind as you're hearing those kind of thoughts come out.

Well, one thing is like television have to go.

It just simply has to go. Television doesn't lead anywhere towards life. It's just a complete waste of time. Yeah.

So, I mean, I don't have televisions.

They are always in the hotel room. They put one, two, or three televisions up. And I never turn it on ever. So that's one thing. And it's interesting with this. I was just thinking about here, like it was yesterday that when I was, I don't know, five, six, seven years, I had my room and what was like the highlights in that ace. And one thing was that I had to have a desk in my room. And it had to have night lights, like an architect lamp. So somehow it was important to have a desk. I didn't know what to use it for yet, but I needed a desk to sit and work with.

And then when I got my first real surreal recorder, I could compile my.

Own music from the radio or wherever I got it from.

And the funny thing is basically like that. It's like when we drive and we'd.

Have to choose a hotel, it has to have a desk, and I have my own speakers with me. So it's kind of like the same setup. Still is still a table and music, you know, but it's not. I don't use music in that way. Well, I used to have a music room. I was just sitting there listening to music, and I find it very inspiring. I also find a way to change the mood or change gear. You know, you're dealing with something, and then you sit down and listen to music, and you're a different universe suddenly. So that's a good way to reset. You're going to say if you are busy with something or you're unhappy or you're concerned, you just listen to music. And 10, 20, 30 minutes later, you're like a new person. So that is. Yeah, that's always a source for inspiration even no matter what kind of music you listen to. I think so.

But as you could say, we talk.

About the decision part. We say observe, decide, execute. And there is like, how do you make a decision? And we said before, well, in the previous episode, we said if you say.

You don't have to tell anybody what.

You want to do. Actually often it's a bad idea to brief other people about what you plan to do in the future because they don't understand it. But if you do and they say that's a bad idea, or if that was something somebody else would have done it, then you're on the right track because they don't understand, but you do. You have a vision with something. So I think that's a good indicator for what is a good decision, and that is follow your own heart. Because you are unique. And that's one thing you have to believe in, that you want to be special and you are unique.

If you don't believe that, then it doesn't matter.

Then you can do anything in life. You could just have somebody tell you what to do.

But I really believe that everybody, most.

People grow up and they feel they have a mission. They have like something special talent. They just haven't figured out yet what it is. And of course you listen to other people and they have ideas and your parents have ideas that like my dad and also my uncle were type setters. So they used to say, become a typesetter. That's always going to be used for typesetters. And we tell that to people today. They say, what is a typesetter? So apparently it wasn't used for typesetters very well. It was just a thing back then. So you can create your own future. And especially I think, well, I think everybody basically have the talent, but you have to have the observe, design and execute to actually make it into reality. But I think everybody have the ability to see some possibilities that something observe something, that it could be nice to build a road here. It would be nice to do this, it could be nice to do that. And then some have, you could say the talent or ability to decide how to do it.

And also along the way, as you.

As you try to make a business become reality, you're going to see that it wasn't as you expected. So now you have to, you're going to make some decisions, you know, to get there, but you have to make decisions and execute.

And the thing is, what you're doing is you're setting up a pattern for your life. You know, like. Like you were talking about. I had a desire for a desk and a light. I didn't know what to do with it. But, you know, and music and the speakers and things. And Jason, you know, he was. He set up his space there in Denver. But the thing is that it's. You're setting up a pattern for a life and something that can allow you to really have new things come into your life. Let yourself think, give yourself basically giving yourself space to think. And you got to work through this idea of constantly moving forward. Because I saw Vincent van Gogh documentary a few days ago, and it. He was saying that, or maybe it was in books, but he said, like, outside of the. He said you go through. It was something like you go through terror and frustration or desperation and terror on the way to the door to a great work of art. You know, that's true.

And.

You know, you're questioning yourself and you're challenging yourself and you're pushing yourself. And so the thing is, you. You can't just center your life around looking around for inspiration, because basically, past a certain point, inspiration is for amateurs and professionals. I'm going to say this. If you guys want to clean it up, professionals just go to work. You know, they've made the decision, this is what I want to do. I can't wait for nobody else. Nobody's going to show up at the front door with the answer to this particular thing. I got to just go to work. And so creative is not waiting for hours for the magic moment. When inspiration comes to the sky and strikes is about showing up, getting started again and again, and then something amazing happens or doesn't happen. But what's important is that you created the opportunity where it could happen, and you create that opportunity again and again and again. It's like investing in stock, you know, or taking a lot of photos. Eventually, you're creating the opportunity where the great one will come, you know, and for that to work, for anything to work, you got to be taking that next step forward. If you're an artist, you draw and paint. You know, Picasso, I saw some of his sketches, and I'm sure you know this. Like, he would sketch in the top. On his sketches, he would have Picasso written pretty big in the top left corner, and then he'd have the date, and then he'd have a Roman numeral and, you know, Roman numeral 1, number, 2, 3, 4. And what that was was how many, what, which sketch for that day it was, yeah. Hey, listen, there's a lot of information.

Online, but there aren't a lot of people who have actually done something. In my case, I've actually built a successful business, has accrued over $5 billion in assets under management, and has done well even during trying times. Now, if you want to know exactly how I've done this, go to Whiteellumwinning.com webinar Now, I've compressed a decade of learning into five short weeks. Just for those of you who want to give yourself an incredible advantage and are tired of waiting and watching others move up.

So you also said something.

Go ahead. Yeah, jump in.

And not expecting to continue at the same rate. Forward. You always work forward. Yeah. You don't stop working.

Yeah.

But success comes in, like punctuated equilibrium, meaning there's moments where it's a huge step forward and then many, many moments where it feels like you're working but you're not making progress. But you have to be doing that work even when the progress isn't happening, because in that moment of punctuated equilibrium, you're going to make huge leaps forward. And that isn't just with making art. That's in anything in life, because everything in life takes creativity and that pushing forward, even when it feels like you're not moving forward.

You know, I remember when even in the business, you know, we recruited trained and people to open their own office and everything, and we'd have recruiting meetings once a week. And I remember Art Williams saying, you know, sometimes you have one person show up, sometimes nobody shows up, you know, and then sometimes you have a big crowd. He said, it doesn't really matter how many show up. It matters that you keep doing the meetings.

So. Yeah, no, but I mean, you said you would refer to my newsletter. And I did a newsletter just a few days ago, a week ago, about. Well, you could say, who do you listen to? But you could say, one of the things I had in this. I said, I had dinner in Paris with a creative person that he charges €20,000 a day. And everybody said, wow, he's doing great. His biggest problem was that he was doubting himself all the time. And then you could say, my only thing I'm saying from that is that, no, I think that just continue to do what you decided to do. That's a great thing because you do have good days and bad days, and.

You can have bad periods, you know.

Or you just decide, no, this is what I'm doing, you know, and you could say, it's almost for Me, I must have made a decision at some point. Now I need a desk. I'm gonna sit by my desk and turn on the light and then see, see what I come up with. And that's how I got into writing and advertising and everything and later photography and all the stuff I do.

You said don't invalidate yourself.

Yeah.

And that is the thing that you could say that invalidation is doubting yourself. And I said, like invalidation is basically definition of invalidation is all the things. Well, it's like you feel less, but you can say it's all the headline for all the undone projects. It's something you get this idea, observe something. You get the idea to do something, but then you don't decide or you wait for somebody else to tell you to do or tell you it's a great idea. But the whole point with art and entrepreneurship and all the things that valuable doing is that nobody can see what you see. They don't understand what you see. And once you made it, then they get it. And then they think it's obvious that.

Everybody have done it.

And I mean, there's lots of examples we can look at like the guys who built the underground train. We have Apple with Steve Jobs, like, why did he do that? Why did he just leave Microsoft do their thing? But he decided, no, I'm going to build a computer this way. It has to be this design, have to be this system. He had lots of things where he decided against, you could say common knowledge. And he just kept doing it. And you, I mean, Larry, you must be a great example of somebody who decided to do something. You just keep doing it. I mean, you're not retiring anytime soon, you know.

Yeah, I know I'm not smart enough to immediately figured out. So I just gotta keep doing it, Keep doing it.

One day has to work. Yeah, but that's true.

Eventually, eventually I will have made all the mistakes and then they will be out of the way and then I can just do it the way it's supposed to be done.

Yeah, but.

But you know, Thorstein, this guy who trained me in financial services was a famous Yankee pitcher and they won like eight World Series in the 60s. And he was in there with Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio and all. If you know baseball in the United States, those are big names, you know, Whitey ford, Yogi, Matt DiMaggio.

No.

Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, he's in locker room with him every day 10 years. And they won. And he met presidents and actors and actresses. Everybody wants to be around the, you know, the World Series winners. And he was a prominent guy on the team because when they came up with a player association, he was elected president for the team, you know, the top rep. And so he knows, you know, he was like eight presidents. He was in the White House with eight presidents. And he said, he told me something, he said, Larry, he said one thing about the really great people is none of them really think they're any that good.

But.

And he said as a result, or this is my take on it. And the other thing he says, he said, but they all, they're always working to improve. And that comes from the fact that. And the third thing he says, and they love it a little bit more than everybody else. And the fact that they love it, they don't think they're that great at it themselves. And so they're always working to get better. And that's what gives them that upward momentum and allows them to come up with those creative type solutions and things like that. And that's where you have to put yourself. You have to put yourself out on the edge like that.

And.

You know, you, that's why it's so important to observe what turns you on and decide if you're going to pursue it or not. And that gives you the freedom to feel like this is the right path for me, you know, until you, you reach a point where it's not. Do you. You want to jump in.

There's also this duality in life, especially as a creative, but it applies to everyone. If you're a successful creative, you tend to notice your failings.

Yeah.

A lot more. And other people are noticing your successes. So the image, and the image portrayed a lot of times is only the successful points. People don't always see all these failures that you don't show the world that it took to get to that point. So don't think that all these successful people around you just magically got there. They aren't showing you all the things that happened to get there.

What a great takeaway. And do you have something you would like to add as a final word for Thorsten on, you know, this deciding phase? And then we're gonna, we're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about the executing here in a minute. But any last word you'd like to leave people on the deciding portion of your upcoming book?

You could say, I mean, you could, you would say one thing. You have to believe in yourself. And Jason, this thing you say is like, reminds me that it's interesting. Like I Take photographs and I look at other photos and some photos I like, and some I don't really notice. I was never really into photographers, but I do study artists. So I'll read about Ansel Adams, I'll read about Hilbert Newton or look at that stuff and try to figure out what is the breakthrough. What. What did they do?

Right?

And the common error people do is that they think, for example, with musicians, they think, oh, Beyonce, for example, is very successful because it looks like she does, as it does the type of music she does, or she has seen many plays on Spotify. But if you go in and look at her career, you will see, no, that's not her breakfast. That's not where she's actually making the money. That's not her success. And I actually don't know what her success, but you could say, I know it. For example, Ansel Adams, that he tried for a long time to be.

A.

Respected artist, like a painter, that you get paid really well for limited prints. And he had some success with it, but not a lot. And when he was like, I think he was 22 or 23. 32. 33. His wife inherited a gallery in Yosemite, and from that gallery they sold postcards, like for $1, and then also some prints for, I think, $20 back then. And that was his first breakthrough. He was 33 years old. He had been at this for like 15 years or more. And he'd been trying to be really respected. And he makes money on postcards he made in today's money. I forgot what it was. It was 180 or 600,000 a year he made on that. That was his first real breakthrough. And you think, no, Ansel Adams has big prints, like 40 times 50 centimeters or bigger. And it's signed. That's where the money is.

No, it wasn't.

It was postcards, you know, and if you look at Helmut Newton, you look at other guys, it's.

It's.

That's not how it was. And you look at Diff Koons, it's like, how did he make money?

You know, And.

And there's always like a different story than what is visible. And that means you cannot just copy others. And then you go back to. You observe with your own uniqueness. And then you make decision based on what you feel is right and what you feel should be done. And that's going to be unique. And that's going to be. It's going to lead to a breakthrough at some point, you know, but it's not copying us, because that's not observing. That's just like you're not actually observing. You can't get a written idea if you don't really research something. 100%, you know.

Absolutely.

If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works in the real world, I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and and put them into something for you to watch. Go to whiteellawinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible. I'm Larry Wydell, and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go, go.