Rethinking Execution #5: Peter Himmelman (Grammy-nominated Musician) on Creativity and Productivity

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the new economy. I'm Scott Levy, CEO and founder of Result Maps, where we're on a mission to help the world be its inspired best. That means helping CEOs and leaders build healthy cultures of relentless execution so you hit your numbers and thrive, no matter where your people are or what challenges come your way. One way we do that is bringing you these sessions with leaders who've learned to thrive even as they navigated uncharted territory and thorny challenges. The idea is to get you actionable, learning you can put into practice immediately to lead and navigate at your best as you thrive forward. In this session, I'm excited to talk creativity, trust, and some techniques for unlocking both in teams. Peter Himmelman built his company, Big Muse, to do just that. They've helped organizations like Boeing, Adobe 3M, Kellogg, and Wharton, to name just a few. And the principles aren't theoretical for Peter. Before he started his company, he was a successful musician, complete with a stack of awards, even Grammy and Emmy nominations. He's prolific by any definition, and he's passionate about teaching others. Peter contributes to Forbes, the Result Maps Performance Resource center, and has written a book I recommend highly called Let me out. Unlock your creative mind and bring your ideas to life. It's been lauded by people like Adam Grant and Arianna Huffington as well. Today we're pulling some ideas from the book, and the first has to do with managing the fear that can get in the way of creative endeavors or anything new to help people do this. Peter gave our fear response a name, and that's the first thing we'll dive into.

So I'm going to start with Marv. How did you come up with Marv? Tell us a little bit about Marv.

Well, it wasn't really. It wasn't hard to come up with Marv because I think I was familiar with Marv probably since earliest childhood. And so understanding my relationship to this fictitious character that lives in our head, it's always kind of telling us why we can't do things and why we can't achieve our goals, why we shouldn't try to make a relationship with somebody that we feel is, quote, above us, you know, and innumerable negatives that this marvel, you know, posits and pushes on us. So I was familiar with him. I was teaching a songwriting course in. Out in the mountains of Colorado, just outside of Boulder, and just the name came to me, you know, like, I must give a name to this character, you know, just to kind of give it a little human sort of Anthropomorphic side. And it was very useful. I started using it when I talked to businesses and it didn't immediately have the acronym squared away. MARV is now an acronym. It became much more relevant. It stands for Majorly Afraid of Revealing Vulnerability. And one day I was just kind of walking around the Northwestern University campus and just sort of name the acronym just kind of fell into place. It was very helpful. It was kind of a moment of, you know, emptiness and reflection. And so I use that metaphor a lot, but it's a serious thing that I give kind of a jocular kind of context to. And I drew a cartoon of Marv. I don't know if you have the ability to show it somewhere, but I.

Love that you made this device because MARV gets in the way of creativity, you know. Were you real conscious that this is, this is really an important blocker for most people when it comes to their ideas about creativity?

Yeah, I mean, it's part of our neuropsychology, you know, roughly stems from the amygdala. It's the sort of primitive brain stem responses to things. And it, you know, it serves a really valuable function. It certainly did in our developmental history. It certainly does. If you're at war, it certainly does. If you're in a menacing street, it does in many situations. It protects you. Don't go there, don't do this. You, you could die. But what happened with Marv is that its use is not always applied or applicable. It keeps working this voice and its purpose is to save our lives. And I apologize if this goes too far afield for some listeners. But Marv is constantly thinking that things, for example, let's say you don't write a lot and somebody, you know, challenges you with writing a poem. Maybe for some people that's very difficult. Now Marv sees that as deadly. Marv's role is to protect us from, you know, rabid pythons or, you know, I don't know if pythons get rabies and maybe it's only a mammalian, but, you know, let's say like, like an ocelot attack, you know, is going to try to, you know, pull down the lever of adrenaline and help us out. But why, why, you might ask, would this fear come around, let's say, getting up and reading a poem that you've written, if this is not something that's comfortable for you, Marvin, to its a potential failure as deadly. And I'll explain it quickly how that, how that works. You can see if it applies your own life about things that are not natively literally deadly, but that stop you from doing whatever it is you want to move ahead with. So if I recite this poem and it fails, anything that you do, that's quote, creative has got to have a potential for failure, you know, to, to fall on its head. So if it fails, I will feel a sense of shame. Shame is not a condition that human beings countenance. It's not that we don't enjoy it, it's. It's anathema to our desire. Because shame leads to abandonment. That is, that is a factual and natural consequence in a society based species which human beings, you know, mostly are. Abandonment is, is fearful. It's horrible. It's almost the thing that we fear most. And then Marv takes it to the, to the final and kind of logical step, at least for him. And when I say him, or we're dealing with, a metaphor here is that abandonment means death. And it certainly meant literal death. When we were young children, being abandoned by our parents or our caretakers meant that we would literally die. And though we may have underarm hair and an AMEX card or whatever it is, these symbols of adulthood, we are still the same children in many ways, looking out through our same eyes. And when Marav gets hold of us, holds us in his sway, in his thrall, and tells us this could be deadly, although we're not really going through these steps, all we feel is this resistance. We many times don't move forward. And my kind of idea is that the more you break this down, is this a true threat to my physical or emotional security? Is it real? Have I fallen into a polar bear cage at a zoo? If so, you're in trouble, man. That thing could swat your head off in 12 seconds. Or is this just one of these things that I don't want to be embarrassed from?

So you give several different ideas and exercises of things to do to make sure you can send Marv on vacation and stay creative and get in a creative zone. One of the things that came up as a way to do that was gratitude. What are some of the things that gave you that?

Aha.

That gratitude is really key to unleash this creativity.

A couple things I'll back up a second. You know, I did use the word failure in describing how that poem, that hypothetical poem might go. But in the book and in the way that I try to look at things, I don't like the word. Not because it's like a shameful word or too harsh, it's inaccurate. Agreed. Yeah, it's Inaccurate in the sense that failure is sort of what happens in a sum total of something. And if that is a concept and a context that we constantly use, it's going to really limit us. If we say we're going to challenge ourselves to do something new and we have assumptions about the outcome, the outcomes may not have turned out as we had planned, which is obviously quite akin to what we think of as failure. But there's a. The subtle difference is, especially in a group or organizational setting, the blame factor isn't going to be there. Now, I sometimes work with United States military. I had a chance to talk to some generals about what is their tolerance for risk and innovation. And a couple people have told me this. I think it may be a theme that is advanced within the military, at least at certain levels, at echelons. They have a great tolerance for what we would call things not working out as they assumed. But what there is zero tolerance for, and I kind of buy this and agree with it, is ineptitude, sloppy work, didn't do your homework in advance. Experimentation will, by nature lead to outcomes that weren't anticipated. That is generally an optimistic and positive thing. But if the language around it is, here's our assumptions, and you failed, it's not true innovation. It's not true experimentation. So, I mean, going back to your question about gratitude, I think that I personally struggle with melancholy. I'm, you know, a sensitive person, and things in the world, things in my relationship can get me down. I would not, nor would probably people around me say, he's the most upbeat person in the world. Like, by nature, I mean, you know, I have to work to stay afloat. And if I had to look at people that I know from my experience, I don't think I'm that much different than most people. People that have that upbeat thing are wisely putting on a happy face. We're human beings, we're frail. No matter how strong our muscles are. A stick comes, a knife comes, and they can cut us. It's the same way with our emotional development. We protect ourselves. But inside we're quite soft, quite susceptible, and quite vulnerable. So I began a practice many years ago where the first thing I do when I wake up, and I do this every day as consistently as I might brush my teeth. I either think or I say or whisper three things that I'm grateful for. Now, this is not a novel idea, of course. I didn't make this up. I tie this, by the way, into an ancient Jewish prayer, which is as soon as you understand that you're awake, which is like there is that time just right when if you read Parse this, I'm not quite awake. I haven't made a commitment to wakefulness. But as soon as you register, you're cognizant of. You have now left the wakeful stage into the consciousness of the day. That moment is such a fecund, special, rich, potentially rich moment to guide your thinking through the day. So the things that I came up with today were. They're so simple too. I walked on the sidewalk with my daughter yesterday on Broadway and had a touching moment that might have lasted four seconds. I Can Breathe was one of them. And maybe that's apropos of what we know today in the George Floyd thing. Maybe that got into the zeitgeist and into my mind. I slept reasonably well. Those three things were important to me. But the timing of evoking those ideas has so much to do with giving birth to what is going to happen through the rest of the day. Again, you know, a lot of people I could imagine. Oh, Jesus, guy talking about gratitude, you know, I've have enough Hallmark cards for a lifetime. The word itself, I mean, the word itself can. It would do it for me too. I'm talking about looking at this thing that has. Has a history of sounding saccharine and hollow, but looking at it as something that's incredibly powerful and functional. There's a utility to it, particularly when this timing is set, as I'm speaking about.

Yeah, and there's. I think you allude to it in the book. And we've had so many conversations, sometimes I don't remember which are from those and which are in the book. But, you know, there's something that happens in our brain when we shift to seeing the world that way. And it sounds metaphysical and perhaps it is, but there's also just some biochemistry involved when you shift out of fight or flight, which is what starts to happen, and into possibility. So this idea of future visions, speaking of possibility, I really like that idea. I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about it.

I mean, I guess that's, you know, by the way, I should say none of the things I talk about are like super novel ideas. My personal thing is, as a songwriter, there's only 12 or 13 ideas in the whole world. I mean, like, you know, there's not that many. So I accept that. But I think, you know, reframing and giving new context to these foundational ideas is everything. So I'm just going to push that out as a Kind of a caveat related very directly to gratitude about what is. Is this seeing what could be. It doesn't have to be big. It can be big. So there's two kinds of future vision. One is today I'm going to make a phone call that's difficult. I'm going to write a letter to somebody. I'm going to envision myself doing something that I know will advance my life and quite possibly the life of whatever it is that I'm going to communicate with something that I'm fearful of. So again, it relates back to that Marv thing. But I can envision myself doing it. And as soon as I sit my ass down in front of my computer, I start typing. I'm already in a completely different universe. It's very small. It's very quantum. It's very. If you measured it, you're not really in a physical place. No one can tell. But the idea of mulling something that's important and we're talking about right now in a future sense, whether it's five years from now or five minutes, mulling it fearfully, not giving it deliberate consideration that would be actually involved in the action. But restraining yourself out of fear from taking the action is so different from being immersed in the action. You could say in some sense you're actually a different person. Are two distinct sides of your personhood. That's one kind of future vision. That's just imagining these small actions and then working to do them immediately or longer range planning in five years from now. Here's where I see myself living. Here's where I see myself working importantly and oftentimes neglected. Here's how I see myself speaking, controlling my emotions and acting in the world. Here's how I see myself as a manifestation of the way I desire to see myself. It's. It comes from inside. It doesn't necessarily. That kind of thinking doesn't. You don't wait around for a certain job or for a certain lottery ticket to pay off. Those things are well within our control. And they have so much influence on how we comport ourselves in the world and what kind of relationships we can connect with. How we can become a magnet for so many other things. So that future vision is something that goes on every day. I'll say one more thing about both that and this gratitude thing. It's not easy. It's extraordinarily difficult. Difficult to do it consistently. It. It. It's not a quick fix, although I continually say it has incredible power. It's like losing weight or getting in physical shape or learning a new language. These things are in some ways exceedingly difficult, especially to. To ramp up and get the momentum. Of course, once you have momentum and you start feeling the gains and looking in the mirror, however that could be, it's much easier. But getting that kind of playing aloft takes a lot of thrust.

I wonder, you know, from the practices in the book and from our conversations and just seeing you create in the world, it strikes me it's really as much a practice and a habit and training those things maybe to make that climb a little less arduous. Do you think that's true?

As everyone knows, there's going to be times where we are just kind of floating through the world. I mean, it's like it's open for us, and it seems like the pathway is so much less impeded. There's other times where it feels like we're walking through, like, molasses. Question is, how do you not become discouraged when it's molasses time? And I would imagine, of course, I've not studied this, but I think for most people, those times of this unimpeded path are quite rare. And you might be able to say that the gains that we make, the. The insights that we glean are probably coming more often through those more freak molasses moments, to coin a new phrase, you know? Right. Those are always going to be difficult. So you mentioned some other thing in a talk about. I want to set you up, but it seems like everything that you're talking about is kind of in a shame. You know, the Marv idea, the future, the gratitude, as a foundation for strengthening this way to tell Marv, hey, man, I honor what you're trying to do. Thank you. Which is another thing. You don't get mad at Marv. He's trying to save you. But, dude, I'm good. Go away, have a smoke, you know, read the New York Times, drink a latte, come back, I know you will, and you'll present more negativity to me. But right now I need a half hour to do what I have to do.

Yeah.

And he's like, okay. And once Marv quote sees you engage in the next thing, he's like, yeah, call me when you need me.

Can you talk to me about filters and doorways and that distinction?

I guess that has a lot to do with. In my mind with that what we're just calling these unimpeded pathways or this molasses moment. You know, there are open doorways, which are nice. It's almost like A free ride. And it's what we really long for. We want to feel the ease. We want to drop the burden. But really isn't that way. The way that we move through. Through things, if we're astute and aware, it is like a filter. In some. Some way, we're. We're. It's passable. But in moving through, we have to shed some of our assumptions, some of our negative assumptions about ourselves, about other people's impressions of us. There is something purifying about just moving ahead with our goals even when we're not, you know, unimpeded. I can't really remember the last time I was unimpeded. This is kind of an interesting. Or at least to me. My daughter, whom I was walking with, I mentioned yesterday, she just graduated from Columbia School of Journalism, and she had her first story yesterday. It was published in this ch. Geopolitical. Very, very important journal called Eurasian Net. And she had the COVID story, and she'd worked on it for three months. And she was so excited, and she was anticipating this, I guess this open moment that I'm talking about where you're just like, I've achieved this and now the world's gonna open up and in some way, or at least my mind is going to open up. But what she found, which every creative person finds upon the release of the album, the manifestation of something, It's a letdown. And what you found through this process, repeated again and again, is what I told her, the only joy that you can ever really have. This intrinsic joy during the creative process itself, it didn't demand the applause of other people. You do these things, we all do these things to kind of like reach out. And, you know, we're gonna have this big thing happen. And maybe there's applause, maybe there's an award, maybe there's a record deal or a book publishing deal. That stuff lasts for about 45 seconds. It doesn't sustain anyone, and it can become quite addictive. The only thing that's within our power is to derive the unique joy that comes from the actual manifestation of whatever it is we're creating. And this is something that her. Her. One of her professors read the thing and she said, it's a very strong piece. And, you know, hopefully you'll have many, many more opportunities to write more. She also said, somehow so moving to me, because my daughter read me this little text and it moves me now. She said, you're. You're a real journalist, And only a real journalist can say that. And it's not crowds. It's not big applause, it's a sense of somebody who knows seeing and acknowledging you and seeing and giving you this gift now, you know, so for me, in terms of. I'm just talking about filters and doorways, another doorway which is so small. If a musician says to me, you know, recently, a very well known and incredible musician, he called me up and said, you know, I just heard this song that you wrote and the bridge with these triplet figures, which is unbelievable to me. It was the biggest compliment. You know, I think of myself so much as a. As a lyricist that I downplay the musicality which always accompanies everything. But you know, when, when this musician said that he's only one person and it didn't go public, it didn't increase my sales, it didn't earn me $1, it gave me such a strong feeling of purpose, of gratitude, of being grounded, of being recognized by someone who, who knows. It's almost like speaking a secret language to people and having respond been responded to.