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How to Optimize Your Performance (with Mitch Swergold) · The Daily Writer

0:10
SPEAKER_00: Hey friends, welcome to episode 101 of the Born to Create podcast.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Kent Sanders, and this is the show where we explore the mindset, habits, and skills to help you make a bigger impact in your creative work.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: You can find lots more resources for artists and creative leaders at KentSanders.net.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: When you head over there, you can grab my free Ultimate Toolkit for Creative Entrepreneurs, which is packed with 24 resources to help you grow your creative business, be more productive, and write and self-publish your book.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: And speaking of writing, are you a leader or an entrepreneur who would love to write a book but you just don't have the time?
0:50
SPEAKER_00: You know, a book is one of the best ways to get your ideas out into the world as well as establish your authority and credibility.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: But why spend hundreds of hours or take out months out of your life to write a book when you should be focused on growing your business.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's where I can help.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: Through my ghostwriting services, I can work with you to craft a book that opens doors and helps you get noticed.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: I can also help you with blog posts and articles if that's what you need.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to chat more about this, you can hit me up by sending me an email at Kent at KentSanders.net.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: Well, hey, let's get into the content for this episode.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: What do you think of when you hear the word optimize?
1:31
SPEAKER_00: Do you think of a robot or maybe some kind of a mechanical system?
1:34
SPEAKER_00: Does the word optimize bring to mind some kind of cold, impersonal approach to life?
1:40
SPEAKER_00: Well, my guest on this episode shows us that optimizing your life is not only a very personal process, it's also necessary if we want to become more productive and creative.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: His name is Mitch Sorghold, and he'll show us how to optimize our performance so we can be at our creative best.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: I'll share the conversation with Mitch in just a couple of minutes, but first let's dive into our ask Kent segment.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: This is the part of the show where I answer your questions about creativity, mindset, habits, or writing.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: And this question was submitted by my friend Sterling Highland.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: Sterling writes Is being a creative generalist necessarily a bad thing?
2:19
SPEAKER_00: That is, dabbling in a wide variety of creative activities without honing one or two specific talents.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, Sterling, thanks so much for your question.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: And I think the answer to this depends on whether you're approaching your creative work as a hobby or as a business.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: And let me explain what I mean by all that.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: If we're talking mainly about a hobby, then the main goal is doing what makes you happy.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: So in this case, I would say follow your whims and your curiosity.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: For example, my son Ben and I will often go to a local hobby shop and we'll get a model and we'll put that model together.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: Or we'll get a couple of boomerangs and go to the park, or maybe the family will go to an ice cream shop where we haven't been to before.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe we'll even go to a local art museum.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: All of those things refresh us on a creative level.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: The point is if we're talking about feeding your creative sensibilities, then following your whims and doing what makes you happy is really the way to go.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: And all of us should be doing those kinds of things whether we have a creative business or not.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: I really believe that creativity and curiosity feed our souls and they give us new ideas.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: Now the other level is when you also do have a creative-based business, meaning that you do something like painting, sculpture, writing, making videos, music, or something else where you're getting paid to use your creative talent.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: And in that case, I do think that you have to specialize in something.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: It really goes back to that old phrase, a jack of all trades and a master of none.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: And I think that if you have a creative business, you ultimately want to become a master of something, or at least a master of something that's related to a range of skills.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: For example, I'm pursuing excellence in writing and storytelling.
3:59
SPEAKER_00: And within that range are a bunch of interrelated skills, but it's one overall focus.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: So that means writing is my hub and my wheelhouse.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: So I study communication and writing in forms of ghostwriting, marketing, copywriting, blogging, fiction, nonfiction, and so forth.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: Now all that being said, I'm also a really strong believer in the cross-pollination of ideas.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: And this is really where the crux of creativity lies.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: And you'll even hear my guest today on this episode, Mitch, talk about this a little bit later in the interview.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: For something new to exist or to be created, something new has to be introduced into the system that's producing the results.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: For example, you cannot have the same system produce something new unless you introduce something new into that system to begin with.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: The best ideas, I believe, in any industry typically come from outside of the field of that industry.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: For example, my favorite artist of all time, Leonardo da Vinci, studied a lot of different things and he cross-pollinated ideas.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: That's why he was referred to as a Renaissance man.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: Michelangelo also did the same thing in a variety of mediums.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: In a modern day context, we have Steve Jobs, who of course founded Apple Computers.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: He was interested not just in computers, but also in typefaces, design, and calligraphy.
5:18
SPEAKER_00: So I think that you have to get a variety of ideas from new places.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, that's one of the big reasons why I do a podcast.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: So I can connect with different kinds of people and get new ideas and build new relationships in ways that I would not be able to otherwise.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: I normally send a copy of my book to people who submit a question, but since I already know that you have a copy, I guess I won't be doing that.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: For everybody else who's listening, though, if you have a question about the creative life, habits, mindset, productivity, or writing, you can submit it by going to KentSanders.net slash podcast and filling out the question form there.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: And if I use your question on the show, I'll send you a free ebook and audiobook of the artist Suitcase.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: Well, as I mentioned earlier, I'm really excited today to have Mitch Sorgold on the show.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: Mitch is a corporate consultant, public speaker, writer, and coach.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: He helps clients increase productivity, reduce stress, improve creativity, and optimize their performance by training our most important and most overlooked asset, which is the human mind and body.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: Mitch is a former lawyer, investment banker, and hedge fund manager who shares what he's learned to help clients understand and benefit from the power of the unconscious mind and to help them live happier, healthier, more successful, and more fulfilling lives.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: Mitch holds a BA from Columbia University and a JD from Emory University School of Law.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: In our conversation today, you're going to learn a number of helpful things, including how your performance is related to your happiness.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: You'll learn some practical ways to be more productive and to deal with stress.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: We talk about how to deal with social media in a way that doesn't add to your stress, how creativity and productivity are related.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: And then finally, he shares some practical ways to be more creative in your everyday life.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: So Mitch shares lots of pure gold in this episode, and I know that you're going to love it.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: And when the episode's over, be sure to check out the show notes at Kent Sanders.net slash 101.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's get into the conversation with Mitch Swergold.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: Well, Mitch, thanks for taking time to be on the show today.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: I appreciate the chance to have this uh fun conversation with you.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: I'm looking forward to it as well.
7:39
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me, Kent.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: So can you share a version or not a version of your story, but can you share a brief version of your story from being on a Wall Street to now helping people optimize their minds and bodies?
7:52
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
7:54
SPEAKER_01: So in uh 2007, I was fortunate to have the beginnings of what led to an understanding of what was happening and would lead to the financial crisis when I was working in the hedge fund business.
8:08
SPEAKER_01: And so at that time, I started thinking about what I wanted to do in the event that everything collapsed, and we sure did come close to that.
8:19
SPEAKER_01: So I ended up leaving Wall Street in August 2008, about a month before things collapsed.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: And I went to the south of France to quote unquote figure out life, whatever that means, and to work on my French.
8:33
SPEAKER_01: And uh one year has turned into 10 years because about six months into that journey, I had my own personal crisis that really drove me to get focused on understanding life.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: And uh I realized that there were things that some other people I knew got in life that I just didn't.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: And so uh I started studying spiritual teachings and within a year noticed that things had changed very dramatically in my life.
9:04
SPEAKER_01: And uh from those spiritual teachings and meditation, I started to want to understand, you know, being a Wall Street guy, a numbers guy, I wanted to understand what's actually going on in my mind, what changed.
9:17
SPEAKER_01: And so I started studying neuroscience, which led me to interpersonal neurobiology, which led me to attachment theory and polyvagal theory and epigenetics and all these other science-y sounding things that are actually pretty easy to understand at a high level and super important.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: And since there's such new science, and I've had the ability and opportunity to take all that analytical rigor that I had as a hedge fund manager and analyst and bring it to this understanding of how the body-mind functions, I now share that with others because I think it's so important.
9:54
SPEAKER_01: So my one year's one year turned into 10 years.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: Gotcha, gotcha.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: So before we move on kind of to some specific topics, can you explain what a hedge fund is for people who aren't familiar with kind of the investing space and Wall Street and all that stuff?
10:10
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
10:11
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, there's a simple way to understand it.
10:13
SPEAKER_01: And of course, there are many different variants, and there are also uh ways that people use hedge fund uh structures, legal structures that aren't really truly hedge fund.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: But a true hedge fund is one that is hedging risk.
10:26
SPEAKER_01: So whereas you might buy a mutual fund and have uh 100% ownership of 100% of the stocks uh that you're involved in, or you might just buy a bunch of stocks.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: We call that being long a stock when you own a stock.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: There's also something called shorting a stock, which is betting the stock will go down rather than up.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: So instead of buying it and then selling it, you reverse the process by first selling it, by borrowing it from a bank.
10:57
SPEAKER_01: You sell it, you collect the capital on it, and then you have to buy it back.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: So if the stock goes up, you're losing money, if the stock goes down, you're making money.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: So if you own two somewhat similar stocks, and sorry, you own one and you've shorted the other.
11:12
SPEAKER_01: So if the market goes up, market goes down, doesn't really matter.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: They're gonna move kind of together.
11:18
SPEAKER_01: But over time, hopefully one moves up more, the one you're long moves up more, and the one you're short goes up less, or conversely, maybe uh if everything is down, the one that you're short goes down more and the one that you're long goes down less.
11:31
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, back when you think about say 2004, when the first bombs were dropped in Iraq, and you could have imagined, you know, what if Saddam attacks you know New York?
11:44
SPEAKER_01: Well, if the market were to open down 50% on the day, like you know, it opened down very hard on 9-11 or after 9-11, you actually make or lose no money theoretically.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: So it's hedging risk.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: So this is a complicated sort of a process, it sounds like it can be very complicated.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: It's not that complicated at a high level, but it can be quite complicated when you get deeper into it.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: And you can use options to hedge risk and so on.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: But you know, at the end of the day, what you're doing is you're paying an insurance policy and you hope you're right.
12:20
SPEAKER_01: You don't hope, you do the research to make sure you're right.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: So let's get into some specific topics related to performance, uh stress, wellness, and so forth.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: I know that you are really passionate about those kinds of topics.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm also going to mention anti-aging, uh productivity, high performance, and so forth.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: Can you talk about why those kinds of topics are so critical for success?
12:42
SPEAKER_00: Why we need to succeed in those areas to be really successful in life?
12:47
SPEAKER_01: You know, I think it ultimately comes down to whether people want to be happy or not.
12:51
SPEAKER_01: Because at the end of the day, the nature of the human condition is that we do have suffering.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: We all have suffering.
12:59
SPEAKER_01: I've sat with people who tell me, Well, I don't suffer.
13:01
SPEAKER_01: What are you talking about?
13:02
SPEAKER_01: And 20 minutes later, I've had grown men crying in my arms, I suffer, you're right, Mitch, I suffer.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: Because we all do in one way, shape, or form.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we're not aware of our suffering and how it drives us, but it does drive our behaviors.
13:17
SPEAKER_01: And you may know that it's estimated that 92 to 98 percent of our behaviors are unconscious.
13:25
SPEAKER_01: I actually think it's 99% plus, is the unconscious mind.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: And so what all of this is really about is going from this very archaic human being that suddenly was able to utilize a credit card-sized piece of the brain at the front behind the forehead to create the world we live in today with all these great technological advances, but without understanding what we were really getting ourselves into, for instance, staring at screens all the time, becoming addicted to that, and all of the negative consequences of these WMD widgets of mass distraction.
14:03
SPEAKER_01: That's good.
14:04
SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
14:05
SPEAKER_01: And so what this is about is learning how to tap into the unconscious mind and utilize the vast amounts of that unconscious mind that are available to us, but we weren't aware of it for the most part.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what that's so true.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: And I've I've read somewhere before that we only use something like 8% of our brains.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't even know if that number is accurate or not, or if I'm remembering that correctly, but I do know we only use a really, really small part.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: So can you talk about um productivity specifically for a few moments?
14:43
SPEAKER_00: Why is productivity so important and how can we start to become more productive?
14:47
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
14:48
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, studies uh estimate that 83% sorry, 87% of workers globally are not engaged at work.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: And the statistic is only slightly better in the United States.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: So that means that if you are running a business, the vast majority of the time that you are peep paying people for, they're off daydreaming, surfing the internet, planning their weekend barbecue, thinking about their spouse or child or what have you, dealing with personal issues.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: They're not engaged.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: And therefore their productivity is much lower than it could be.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: And it's not because they're lazy or bad people, it's because it's the nature of the human condition.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: We haven't tapped into how do we work in a way that makes more sense and doesn't stress us out so much.
15:46
SPEAKER_01: Because there are two types of stress.
15:48
SPEAKER_01: I know you're gonna ask me about that, and it plays into this, so I'll talk about it here.
15:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's great.
15:53
SPEAKER_01: There's good stress and there's bad stress, right?
15:55
SPEAKER_01: So toxic stress is a so what is stress?
15:59
SPEAKER_01: Stress is when challenges begin to exceed your resources for dealing with them.
16:08
SPEAKER_01: And when they are far in excess of your ability to deal with them, that's toxic stress.
16:14
SPEAKER_01: That's helplessness, and that creates trauma, which is another big subject that I can talk all day about, so I'll just come back to stress here.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: So, what we want to do is we want to be in that state where we're being challenged just a little bit at the top end of our capacity.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: That drives us to be more productive.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: That's we know we can do it, we just need to focus and work hard.
16:42
SPEAKER_01: And those are really important skills for success in life.
16:47
SPEAKER_01: But if we become so overwhelmed that we can't deal with it and we feel helpless or we feel like we're not going to be able to do it, then we go into toxic overload, and that's not productive at all.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let me throw out a uh, let's say a case study, uh, for example.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: But I was on Facebook uh kind of chatting with a friend.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's a guy in his early 40s and he's in a job situation he doesn't like.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh he really wants to move out of it.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not talking about myself, by the way.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: I love what I do, I love teaching.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: So sometimes when we say, Oh, hey, I know this guy, you know, we're not gonna be able to do that.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's but a friend.
17:23
SPEAKER_01: I'm asking asking for a friend.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, literally this in this situation, I'm literally talking about somebody else.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: But it's a guy who is feeling a lot of stress uh because he wants to move into a different role.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't know if he can develop uh different business skills to move into a different job, he feels financial pressure.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: So he's feeling stress from lots of different angles.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: If you were going to sit down with somebody in that situation, you know, he's got a couple kids, um, is married.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: So how what are some tips that you would give someone in that situation where they feel like life in general is really stressing them out right now?
17:56
SPEAKER_00: Is there kind of a beginning point or a few baby steps they could take to start moving in the right direction?
18:01
SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: So I think it's important just to notice that those stressors are worries about things in the future.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: Good point.
18:14
SPEAKER_01: Because right in this present moment, he's fine.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: He's breathing, his kids are breathing, his wife is breathing, he's fine.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: He's working, he's doing whatever it is he has to do.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: So the first thing that I would do is to teach him to meditate, I would use mindfulness meditation, and I would teach him about the difference between the present moment and accepting this present moment as it is, and then working constructively towards change as opposed to this projection that I'm not good enough, I'm not where I need to be.
18:50
SPEAKER_01: All of those fear-based activities are just harmful, and this is the kind of suffering that many people don't even realize that they have.
19:00
SPEAKER_01: So when we're focused on the future, it's fine to have a goal.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: You know, take that goal, put it on, here's something you can do.
19:07
SPEAKER_01: Take that goal, put it on a post-it, put it on your mirror, look at it when you're brushing your teeth in the morning, and then that's it.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: Don't look at it again.
19:16
SPEAKER_01: Then journal about what are the things that I need to accomplish in order to achieve my goals.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: And you can have the high-level goals that are for say a year from now or whatever time frame it may take to achieve them, and then bring them closer and closer to the present moment.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: What needs to be done by when?
19:33
SPEAKER_01: And then what needs to be done today?
19:36
SPEAKER_01: And then don't make it a list of 20 things that needs to be done today because that's not going to happen, but make three.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: A top three.
19:44
SPEAKER_01: These are the things that must be done right now.
19:49
SPEAKER_01: So the question is what needs to be done right now.
19:54
SPEAKER_01: And then this way it's much more digestible and manageable.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: And in fact, that is a process for managing how we get from point A to our hopes, goals, and dreams.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: How do you think that social media plays into this?
20:10
SPEAKER_00: Because my my gut feeling, well, not my gut feeling, but I I'm guessing there's research out there on this, or I may I may totally just be blowing smoke and making this up.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: But my my gut feeling anyway, is that social media only increases our level of stress and anxiety, or it can potentially.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: And whenever we see, hey, look at everybody else's life and how great it is, then we see you know our lives from the inside.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: That only sort of increases the idea that, oh man, I'm a failure and I haven't achieved this and that and so forth.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: Any suggestions for dealing with social media in a healthy way that doesn't add to our stress?
20:44
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all, you just expressed what the studies are showing.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day, I you know, we can all put up photos of how wonderful our life is and so on.
20:55
SPEAKER_01: And then other people tend to think, oh, that person's life is so wonderful.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: And how come mine's not like that?
21:01
SPEAKER_01: But they're not seeing the rest of the fact that, like me, everyone suffers.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: We all suffer.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: We all have our stuff.
21:09
SPEAKER_01: And so that's how social media can be harmful because it gets us into comparison.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: And comparison is one of the most deadly things we can do for our own emotional well-being.
21:23
SPEAKER_01: Because my journey and your journey and everybody else's journey, they're all different journeys.
21:29
SPEAKER_01: We all have different starting points.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: And you know, I might be really good at one thing and not so good at others, and you might be really good at the other thing that I'm not good at, but not so great at the thing that I am good at.
21:42
SPEAKER_01: And if you take that and expand it to the hundreds or thousands of things that we're all good or not so great at, then you can see how really we're all the same.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: We're all the same.
21:54
SPEAKER_01: Some people may excel at certain things, and that's wonderful and amazing.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: But take a look at movie stars.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: As a perfect example, or any kind of very famous artist, many of these people have tremendous suffering in their life.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: They end up in rehab, they end up dealing with depression, they end up dealing with isolation, they end up dealing with all kinds of terrible things.
22:18
SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
22:19
SPEAKER_01: They're no different than you or me.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: We all have this kind of stuff.
22:24
SPEAKER_01: So when we start to realize that we can equalize ourselves and others, and that really comparing ourselves to others doesn't help us and it doesn't help them, but rather focusing on being of service to others actually makes us feel good.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: And the studies show that.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: Right?
22:52
SPEAKER_01: So who is the end beneficiary of what he's doing?
22:55
SPEAKER_01: Or what does he do?
22:56
SPEAKER_00: He works in a church as a music director.
23:00
SPEAKER_01: Okay, great.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: And so you can imagine how he has all of the constituents in that church community, and they all arrive at church and they hear the beautiful music that's being played, that he's orchestrated and he's determined, and they get great benefit from that.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: And he can feel good about his service to those people, bringing something enriching to their lives.
23:26
SPEAKER_01: And that's one way to feel better about whatever it is that we're doing today.
23:30
SPEAKER_01: And I don't care what the thing is that you're doing, as long as it's of service.
23:34
SPEAKER_01: And if it's not, like if you're you know working in some you know organization that rips people off, then it's not gonna resonate well inside of you.
23:45
SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna feel good about yourself unless you're a sociopath, in which case this doesn't apply.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: But and and by the way, I think the statistic is 4% of all people are sociopaths.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: That's one in 25.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: So if you walk into a movie theater and there are 300 people in there or 200 people in there, there are 8 to 12 sociopaths in that movie theater with you.
24:13
SPEAKER_01: So that's a little scary.
24:15
SPEAKER_01: It's a little scary, but they're probably not listening to this podcast.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: And what we need to focus on is recognizing that when we're doing something of service, we feel good about ourselves.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: And then we can plan what else we want to do in our lives, the way that I described before.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: And especially through journaling, which studies have shown, hand-written journaling can be very, very helpful for the brain to integrate and perceive things in new ways.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: We use different parts of the brain when we do that than we would, for instance, if we type it into a computer.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I totally agree.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: So I and I don't practice this as faithfully as I should, but I have a practice called Morning Pages that came from the author Julia Cameron.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: She has a book called The Artist's Way, and she talks about every morning just sitting down and in she doesn't call it journaling, but just writing out three pages, you know, uh handwriting it in a journal or a notebook or something.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: And uh I know that whenever I practice that, it is uh usually really revealing.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: I remember a time not too long ago, I was doing this, and it wasn't until the third page where I somehow I came across some insight about myself that was just mind-blowing.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh, that's why I do that.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: So there's definitely this connection between your brain and your hand when you handwrite something.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I love that insight.
25:37
SPEAKER_01: And and really that will bring we'll talk about that again when we get into creativity.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: The other thing I just want to mention is that it really doesn't matter what we call things.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: If we call it journaling, if we call it pages or whatever, I can't remember the words you used.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh morning pages.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: Morning pages, yeah.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: All it is is a label.
25:58
SPEAKER_01: It's pointing us in a direction to a concept that you and I both know what that is.
26:03
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: And and it's really the same with all communication.
26:08
SPEAKER_01: If I'm driving on the highway and I'm heading towards, you know, you know, let's pick San Francisco, right?
26:16
SPEAKER_01: And there's a sign on the highway and it says San Francisco, and there's an arrow.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: Is the sign San Francisco?
26:22
SPEAKER_01: No, of course not.
26:24
SPEAKER_01: But it's pointing you to San Francisco.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: So it's just a label, and so too is anything that we can describe.
26:34
SPEAKER_01: It's just, they're just labels.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: You have to have these as experiences for yourself to truly know what they are.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: Hey, I hope you're enjoying the conversation, and we'll get back to it in just a couple minutes.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: But first I want to take a second to mention that this episode is brought to you by Convert Kit.
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28:02
SPEAKER_00: Now let's get back to the conversation.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: So I'd love to get your thoughts on creativity.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: So we've kind of established a foundation of productivity.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: What do you feel like creativity is?
28:12
SPEAKER_00: Like how do you define it and how would you see that related to productivity?
28:16
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
28:17
SPEAKER_01: That's a great question.
28:19
SPEAKER_01: So uh creativity is bringing together uh new ideas and concepts to bring into the world something that didn't exist before.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: Just like creation, you know, creating the world, right?
28:41
SPEAKER_01: So, and and you know, that's not a religious comment, it's just the the idea of what creativity is.
28:47
SPEAKER_01: And so when I think about that in terms of the brain, first if you think about it as there are these disparate pieces of information that are in disparate parts of your brain, and they're able to come together and out of those pieces of information create something new.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: That's what creativity is about.
29:10
SPEAKER_01: And it's very different from focusing.
29:14
SPEAKER_01: So when you get very focused on a task, it's very taxing on brain resources.
29:22
SPEAKER_01: It makes us very tired, it reduces our empathy, it reduces our creativity.
29:27
SPEAKER_01: And so, have you ever noticed that your best ideas tend to come to you when you're in the shower, or maybe you're out running, or you're driving?
29:39
SPEAKER_00: Always.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: Almost always.
29:41
SPEAKER_01: So the reason is because instead of being in that focused part of the brain, you're in what's called the default mode network.
29:50
SPEAKER_01: And the default mode network has some aspects that are beneficial and some aspects that are kind of painful.
29:58
SPEAKER_01: And what I mean by that is when we're in the default mode network of the brain, which is joining disparate parts of the brain, we're not focused on task.
30:08
SPEAKER_01: So we tend to become more aware at an unconscious level of threat vulnerabilities.
30:16
SPEAKER_01: We're all processing vast amounts of information every moment of every day, unconsciously, where we are scanning for threat in all directions and with all of our senses.
30:29
SPEAKER_01: So we tend to then get caught up in thought and maybe even ruminating thought if something challenging has been going on in our lives, where we go into those threat response states of I'm not big enough, you know, tall enough, attractive enough, rich enough, smart enough, good enough, I screwed up, this is bad, that's bad, the other thing.
30:50
SPEAKER_01: You know what I'm saying?
30:51
SPEAKER_01: Those kinds of things.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: But there's another way to be in the default mode network, and that's where the unconscious mind is very important for helping our creativity.
31:05
SPEAKER_01: So if we learn how to meditate to get us there, the first thing we would do is maybe do mindfulness practices, which help us be aware of the idea that my mind and the things that appear in my mind aren't the same thing.
31:23
SPEAKER_01: They're just appearances in my awareness.
31:27
SPEAKER_01: Right?
31:28
SPEAKER_01: Like a thought, it comes and it goes.
31:31
SPEAKER_01: Or a sensation, it comes and it goes.
31:33
SPEAKER_01: Or that feeling in my elbow.
31:36
SPEAKER_01: Or the focus on my finger.
31:38
SPEAKER_01: They come and go.
31:40
SPEAKER_01: And you can notice this too, by the way.
31:41
SPEAKER_01: Like focus on your right shoulder really, really intensively, focus on your right shoulder, focus on your right shoulder.
31:45
SPEAKER_01: What does it feel like?
31:46
SPEAKER_01: Focus on your right shoulder.
31:47
SPEAKER_01: Now focus on your left small toe.
31:49
SPEAKER_01: Focus on your left small toe, your left small toe, your left small toe, your left small toe, focus on the left small toe.
31:54
SPEAKER_01: What does it feel like?
31:55
SPEAKER_01: What are the sensations?
31:56
SPEAKER_01: Is it moist?
31:57
SPEAKER_01: Is it warm?
31:57
SPEAKER_01: Is it cold?
31:58
SPEAKER_01: Is it dry?
31:59
SPEAKER_01: What is it like?
32:00
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
32:00
SPEAKER_01: Now you can notice for a second that when you're so focused on your left small toe, you completely lost focus from your right shoulder.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: So we can shift our attention at will.
32:15
SPEAKER_01: The question is, what are we focused on?
32:17
SPEAKER_01: What is our attention going to?
32:19
SPEAKER_01: So that is helpful in understanding concentration or focus meditation, which is what comes after mindfulness.
32:29
SPEAKER_01: So, first there's mindfulness, being aware that we can have thoughts, feelings, and experiences that aren't us, that it's just an appearance in our awareness.
32:36
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
32:38
SPEAKER_00: It really does.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: In fact, so this reminds me of something that I read recently.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: Are you familiar with the author Robert Green?
32:45
SPEAKER_00: No.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: So he wrote a book called The 48 Laws of Power.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: It's about 20 years old.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: His new book is called The Laws of Human Nature.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's a huge, like several hundred pages, but it's a huge book.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: But the first chapter in the book talks about mastering your emotions.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: And what you're talking about, it really reminds me of that.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: And in the book, he talks about, you know, just because you feel angry doesn't uh like you can feel the emotion, but then you can think about the emotion you're feeling.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: In other words, you can sort of set that emotion over here and go, okay, I feel angry, but then you can sort of have thoughts about that emotion uh in a sense.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm probably not explaining that at all in a good way, but uh just this this sense of awareness and mindfulness of okay, this is what I'm thinking or feeling right now.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: And the fact that we we can sort of separate ourselves from what we're feeling and and think about what we're feeling rather than just saying, I feel this and I've got to react to it.
33:40
SPEAKER_01: That's what mindfulness is all about.
33:42
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, we can get a lot deeper into that.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: I know you want to get to some other stuff, so I won't delve into it right now, but I agree with that, and that is what mindfulness is about.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: So I was explaining that there's mindfulness, then there's focused awareness, which is concentration on a particular point or idea or concept.
34:02
SPEAKER_01: But it's really when we go to open focus awareness, the third type of meditation, where we're able to then get into this default mode network in a way that is productive for bringing together new ideas.
34:20
SPEAKER_01: The reason that it's very important to do the mindfulness meditation before and get maybe more uh experienced with it, before we get to open focus and awareness, is because with open focus awareness and you're in the default mode network, you can actually get into those ruminating thoughts, those negative thoughts, and you can be following them without having trained your mind first through mindfulness practice so that you have a clearer mind, and these disparate things can come together.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: So, effectively, what we're doing is we're purposefully sitting down and we're going into the open focus mind, the default mode network, just like we would in the shower.
35:04
SPEAKER_01: We're recreating the environment for our mind to have creative capacity.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I love that concept that we can change our minds, that it's it's changeable, we can change our you know, our emotional state, we can be more mindful.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: There are things that we can do to be more creative, it's not just an accident or some random thing, which is in a sense that is what this whole podcast is about.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: You know, uh at least in large part.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, I love what you're sharing.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: It's that's really good stuff.
35:37
SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
35:38
SPEAKER_01: So if you want to move from productivity to creativity, how do we be more productive and more creative?
35:45
SPEAKER_01: And you know, there are a number of steps you can do.
35:48
SPEAKER_01: One is you can plan the way I described before with journaling and so on.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: That way you're getting these thoughts on paper out of your head so you don't feel as compelled to ruminate on them.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: Two, you can train yourself in mindfulness meditation so you become much better at understanding the distinction between you, your mind, and your awareness and the things that arise in your awareness.
36:13
SPEAKER_01: Three is open-focused awareness, which we've talked about.
36:17
SPEAKER_01: Four is journaling the things that you want and also journaling just creative ideas, just writing, writing, writing, whatever comes to your mind.
36:26
SPEAKER_01: Don't sit and think, don't focus on anything, just write.
36:29
SPEAKER_01: Another one is napping.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: It turns out that five to fifteen minutes of napping can give you one to three hours of mental clarity, according to studies.
36:38
SPEAKER_01: And better yet, 60 to 90 minutes of napping activates your REM sleep, which aids your creativity.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: Um, there's also a book uh called Tinker Dabble Doodle Try.
36:52
SPEAKER_01: And in that book, the author, Srinih Pillay, who's a Harvard psychiatrist, talks about how doodling studies by Jackie Andrade actually can have shown that by doodling we can be more open-focused aware.
37:10
SPEAKER_01: They don't call it that, but I am calling it that.
37:13
SPEAKER_01: So doodling can be very helpful to get you into that open-focused state where you're not hyper-focused and therefore unable to allow those other resources to come together in your mind.
37:25
SPEAKER_01: And that's the flow state.
37:27
SPEAKER_01: When you're doing anything in life, if you think about the things that have gone really, really well, they always happen in the flow state, which is where the unconscious mind is taking control.
37:38
SPEAKER_01: But have you noticed that if you really think about it, like if you're running and you have a great stride, everything's going well, and you're feeling good, but if you start actually thinking about how your legs are moving, it doesn't feel the same anymore.
37:51
SPEAKER_01: You go out of your flow state.
37:52
SPEAKER_01: And it's the same thing with any work that we do that involves any kind of creativity or even reading.
37:59
SPEAKER_01: You start thinking about every single word instead of just sort of letting it flow over your brain like a fine wine flows over your tongue, just absorb what you get with it.
38:09
SPEAKER_01: Then you're going to get out of the flow state, and you're not going to be as productive or creative.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is a lot of good stuff.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh so many practical things you're talking about.
38:20
SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate you sharing all this.
38:22
SPEAKER_00: This is a pure gold.
38:25
SPEAKER_00: It's my pleasure.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: So let's dive into our uh lightning round.
38:29
SPEAKER_00: This is a series of questions that uh are short and sweet.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: And uh just related to creativity in my guest life.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: So, Mitch, what is your favorite movie?
38:42
SPEAKER_01: I have so many, but you know, one of my uh favorites is one that I watched recently for the first time.
38:48
SPEAKER_01: I think it was made in the early 2000s or the late 90s, and it's a beautiful mind.
38:52
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
38:53
SPEAKER_01: In a movie, there's a scene.
38:56
SPEAKER_01: Do you know the movie I'm talking about?
38:57
SPEAKER_00: I do, with Ron Howard, or Ron Howard directed it and Russell Crowe.
39:00
SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
39:02
SPEAKER_01: And what's so great about that film is it really can help us to understand how we all have different perspectives.
39:11
SPEAKER_01: Because in that, you know, what I deal with with people is helping people to see, amongst many things that I deal with people, is helping people to see that things aren't necessarily the way they perceived them to be.
39:25
SPEAKER_01: And as a result, if they are able to open their mind to the idea that something could be a different way, cogn this is sort of a cognitive empathy, if it's in someone else, or you know, seeing something in something, someone else or someone else's perspective.
39:44
SPEAKER_01: But it also can be just seeing the world in a different way.
39:47
SPEAKER_01: When we start to see that in the extreme of that film, his mind is projecting things that don't exist based on his inner childhood fears.
40:01
SPEAKER_01: That's just how his mind came to make him feel safe.
40:08
SPEAKER_01: We all do this, but to a lesser degree.
40:12
SPEAKER_01: And the less you do this, the healthier your mind is.
40:14
SPEAKER_01: But it's really no big deal.
40:16
SPEAKER_01: When I say it's no big deal, it's like it's nobody's fault that our minds end up however they end up.
40:21
SPEAKER_01: It's not his fault that his mind ended up the way it did, and it didn't make him a bad person.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: In fact, you could see, at least as the movie portrayed him, that he actually was a genuinely nice guy, especially at the end, where he's so humble as to ask a student whether the person he's speaking to is real or not, the person who comes from the Nobel Committee.
40:39
unknown: Right.
40:40
SPEAKER_01: So that kind of humility and realization that we don't know.
40:46
SPEAKER_01: We just don't know.
40:48
SPEAKER_01: We don't know, and we don't know what we don't know.
40:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's your favorite movie.
40:54
SPEAKER_00: Um how about your favorite music group or solo artist?
40:59
SPEAKER_01: So I I love all kinds of music, but one thing that really resonated with me at the beginning of this journey was I was living in the south of France and I would go running all the time.
41:08
SPEAKER_01: And at the time, Madonna's album, Ray of Light, was very popular, and I was listening to it a lot.
41:15
SPEAKER_01: And I started realizing there are some songs in there where she's got some really deep lyrics that she's conveying in a way that's very palatable and enjoyable to anyone listening like me.
41:29
SPEAKER_01: But if you really listen to those lyrics, there's some real value in there.
41:34
SPEAKER_01: I think she actually did a great service.
41:37
SPEAKER_01: I know it's uh some of her works uh from earlier might not uh be as aligned, but those that the songs on that album were really pretty terrific.
41:46
SPEAKER_01: It was Ray of Light, and also um there was another one I can't remember that had the song sorry on it.
41:52
SPEAKER_01: But anyway.
41:54
SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh what is your favorite book, either fiction or nonfiction?
42:00
SPEAKER_01: I have many, many, many, many favorite nonfiction books that have been so helpful to me in understanding the body and mind.
42:10
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I've loved everything from uh Shakespeare and fiction, if that's actually fiction, um, to um the The Iliad.
42:18
SPEAKER_01: But I would say that in this realm that we're talking about here, I think The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, and then his second book, A New Earth, those are incredibly important works.
42:33
SPEAKER_01: They're really useful.
42:34
SPEAKER_01: And uh I actually have read or listened to The Power of Now over 30 times.
42:39
SPEAKER_01: And the first time I ever read to it, read it, I thought it was just crazy and I wasn't interested at all.
42:46
SPEAKER_01: And I finally read it when I was going through that crisis.
42:50
SPEAKER_01: Having read it then many more times, I actually gave a 10-week course on that book uh a few years ago.
42:57
SPEAKER_01: So it came full circle for me.
42:59
SPEAKER_01: So I I love his works.
43:01
SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh two more in our lightning round here.
43:04
SPEAKER_00: What is your biggest creative failure and what did you learn from it?
43:08
SPEAKER_01: I think it's actually um very apropos for this um this uh podcast.
43:16
SPEAKER_01: I had decided to set out on this task of sharing what I've learned with others because I was coaching some uh people on Wall Street, and I kept hearing the same thing.
43:29
SPEAKER_01: You need to share this with everyone.
43:31
SPEAKER_01: Like you changed my life.
43:35
SPEAKER_01: And so I said, okay, hang out right there, I'll be back in a year.
43:40
SPEAKER_01: I need to go become a public speaker, but I need to study it first.
43:44
SPEAKER_01: So I went to Toastmasters and I joined three Toastmasters, and I spoke as much as I possibly could every week.
43:49
SPEAKER_01: But my first talk, I wrote this beautiful speech, and then I realized I couldn't memorize the thing.
43:58
SPEAKER_01: It was just too much, it was too overwhelming.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: Overwhelming was too difficult.
44:01
SPEAKER_01: And I got up there and I gave the speech reading it.
44:06
SPEAKER_01: And that's not what it's about.
44:08
SPEAKER_01: It's about extemporaneous speech, albeit prepared, but having an idea of what you're going to talk about.
44:14
SPEAKER_01: But it's about getting up and telling stories and sharing with people and having that rigidity.
44:19
SPEAKER_01: And it taught me a lot more about flexibility and not needing things to be perfect, but needing them to be wanting them to be audible and well delivered and just having a good idea of what I want to talk about and delivered in a way that resonated with people.
44:40
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
44:42
SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh last lightning round question here is what is the project that you're most excited about working on right now?
44:51
SPEAKER_01: I I would say, you know, I'm writing a number of books, one of which I think will be super useful to people.
44:57
SPEAKER_01: Um it's it's uh in process.
45:00
SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm also writing a whole bunch of articles, and actually those articles are short.
45:06
SPEAKER_01: They're very practical, and I think that they walk people through since I've written most of them already, uh, and I'm gonna start letting them out one by one on my blog and in um publications online.
45:20
SPEAKER_01: So those are very practical ways of starting to understand your mind and then be able to utilize it in a way that you can live a happier, healthier, freer life with better relationships, better productivity, better creativity, and less stress.
45:38
SPEAKER_01: And so actually, I would encourage people to, if they are interested in that, you can go to my website, which is www.eselfmasterygym.com or Mitch Sword.com, doesn't matter if you get you in the same place.
45:55
SPEAKER_01: And next to the video on the right side, you can put in your name and email address, and I'll put you on my distribution list.
46:04
SPEAKER_01: And you'll get these.
46:05
SPEAKER_01: You won't get a whole lot of stuff from me.
46:06
SPEAKER_01: I won't overwhelm anyone, but you'll get an occasional, concise and very practical, helpful article, as well as if anybody's interested in seeing me speak, you'll get announcements about when I'll be speaking, maybe local to where you live, as well as uh my book releases and uh any programs that uh I have to offer.
46:26
SPEAKER_01: So those are the things I'm really excited about right now.
46:29
SPEAKER_00: Cool.
46:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll have links to all that stuff in the show notes.
46:32
SPEAKER_00: And um, man, I really appreciate the chance to chat with you today, Mitch.
46:35
SPEAKER_00: This has been really informative, very inspiring.
46:37
SPEAKER_00: Uh, this has impacted me personally, so I'm coming away with some ideas uh as well.
46:42
SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate you taking time to do this.
46:45
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, it's been my pleasure.
46:47
SPEAKER_01: And I should mention that when you do sign up for the distribution list, you also get a free resource, uh, a five-page uh five-point report on increasing productivity right now.
47:00
SPEAKER_01: Five simple steps that you can do to increase your productivity.
47:04
SPEAKER_01: So, and I think they're pretty novel steps, so they're they're probably very useful.
47:09
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
47:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, I will have a link to that in the show notes as well as the other stuff.
47:13
SPEAKER_00: So thanks again, and uh, appreciate you taking time to do this.
47:16
SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much, Kent.
47:18
SPEAKER_01: Really enjoyed it, and uh great speaking with you.
47:23
SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Mitch.
47:25
SPEAKER_00: I want to share my three biggest takeaways from this interview.
47:29
SPEAKER_00: Number one, the power of meditation and mindfulness.
47:34
SPEAKER_00: Now, these are two different concepts, but I'm putting them together here because they're related.
47:39
SPEAKER_00: And if you notice, this was a big theme in our conversation, this idea of being mindful about your emotions and being very intentional about your state of mind, and meditation being one of the ways that we can be very intentional about putting ourselves in a correct state of mind.
47:55
SPEAKER_00: One of the most important insights that I think Mitch mentioned in this whole conversation was simply the power of being mindful, the power of being aware of your feelings, of acknowledging those feelings, and then making a plan to move forward.
48:09
SPEAKER_00: In fact, you may recall that I mentioned uh sort of a case study of a friend of mine who's very unhappy in his job, and Mitch gave some really great advice.
48:19
SPEAKER_00: He said that a good way to deal with that kind of a situation is just to acknowledge that the stress that you're feeling is due to the fact that you're scared about what might happen in the future.
48:29
SPEAKER_00: But that future hasn't happened yet, so just be aware of those feelings and acknowledge them, and then make a plan to create a new future.
48:36
SPEAKER_00: Now he he didn't say it exactly that way, but that was the gist of it is acknowledge your feelings, recognize that that stress comes from being afraid of a possible future outcome, and then making a plan so that you can avoid that future that is causing you stress.
48:53
SPEAKER_00: I also mentioned in the conversation that I practice something called morning pages that has been really, really helpful to me.
48:59
SPEAKER_00: And let me expand on that just a bit here.
49:01
SPEAKER_00: This comes from a book called The Artist's Way, written by a wonderful author named Julia Cameron.
49:07
SPEAKER_00: And this is um just a meditation and journaling practice where every morning you write three longhand pages, and that helps you to be mindful of where you are in life.
49:18
SPEAKER_00: It helps you to think through any problems that you're dealing with, and it's really just kind of a way to do a brain dump at the beginning of your day.
49:25
SPEAKER_00: And I have found this to be an extraordinarily helpful practice.
49:28
SPEAKER_00: And more often than not, when I do this practice, it brings to mind things that I would not have realized about myself otherwise.
49:35
SPEAKER_00: I get insights, I get new thoughts, I get uh creative connections between things that I would not have had if I hadn't sat down to do that exercise.
49:44
SPEAKER_00: So I really want to recommend that to you.
49:46
SPEAKER_00: And I'll have a link to that book in the show notes.
49:48
SPEAKER_00: In addition, I've also been practicing meditation more and more lately, which has been a huge help in my own life as far as dealing with stress and getting me centered and focused and into the right frame of mind.
50:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm definitely not an expert in all this stuff, but I do know that it really does work.
50:04
SPEAKER_00: And as a person who tends to be very task-oriented and kind of an introvert, I can definitely tell you that being mindful, that practicing morning pages, that practicing journaling and just being aware of all these things is a huge help in life.
50:20
SPEAKER_00: Takeaway number two, how to generate more creative ideas.
50:25
SPEAKER_00: Creativity is bringing together new ideas that haven't been put together before.
50:29
SPEAKER_00: And that is primarily the way that I look at creativity.
50:32
SPEAKER_00: And as I mentioned in the QA segment at the beginning, creativity involves putting something new into the system so that you can have a different result.
50:42
SPEAKER_00: And again, this is why I think we need to read and to learn in different areas.
50:46
SPEAKER_00: We need to be reading outside of our normal area, reading a variety of things, reading a variety of perspectives, and also reading on a regular basis.
50:55
SPEAKER_00: But it's not just reading, it's also listening to podcasts, getting involved with different groups of people, and basically just studying, learning, and getting exposed to things that are outside of things that we already know or believe, so that we can have different kinds of input.
51:10
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that we don't have opinions or that we don't have perspectives or we don't have beliefs.
51:15
SPEAKER_00: That's not what I'm talking about.
51:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about just having different kinds of input so that we can have new things to add into the mix, so that we can have new and creative output in our lives.
51:27
SPEAKER_00: One of the things that Mitch mentioned is this idea of why it is that we get great ideas when we're in the shower, whenever we're running, and whenever we're driving.
51:36
SPEAKER_00: And it's because we're not focused on the task, we're not focused on work, we're not focused on thinking hard when we're doing those things.
51:44
SPEAKER_00: Those are times whenever we're thinking about other things, or we're just sort of letting our mind wander.
51:49
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we're listening to music or we're just kind of zoning out.
51:52
SPEAKER_00: And those are the times when our brain really goes to work in processing and in synthesizing these ideas that and these concepts that we've put into our minds.
52:02
SPEAKER_00: So the bottom line is if we want to have more creative ideas, we've got to have different kinds of input and more kinds of input.
52:09
SPEAKER_00: But we also have to let our brains do the creative work for us.
52:13
SPEAKER_00: I know I'm guilty of sometimes just trying too hard to be creative.
52:17
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I just try to force the process instead of letting my brain do its thing naturally, and sometimes just going for a run or going for a drive or doing something that lets my brain just kind of take over and be its best creative self.
52:32
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully everything I'm saying is making sense.
52:34
SPEAKER_00: Um I feel like I'm going off in a bunch of different tangents in this takeaway section, but hopefully this is all making sense.
52:42
SPEAKER_00: Then finally, takeaway number three is learning how to deal with the stress of social media.
52:47
SPEAKER_00: And Mitch mentioned something that really is a problem, I believe, today, and that is we're on social media all the time, and being on social media produces sometimes this sense of comparison or jealousy.
52:59
SPEAKER_00: But remember that social media is a curated platform.
53:03
SPEAKER_00: You do this, I do this, and everybody does this, where we're not going to put something on social media that probably makes us look bad.
53:10
SPEAKER_00: We're not going to put the mundane or the non-exciting parts of our day for everybody to see.
53:15
SPEAKER_00: We're going to put the highlights up there.
53:18
SPEAKER_00: And what happens is that whenever we view someone else's highlights, we compare that with our mundane lives.
53:24
SPEAKER_00: And everybody's life is mundane on some level.
53:26
SPEAKER_00: We all sleep, we all eat, we all, you know, take showers and we all pay the bills and we mow our lawns and we do all the things that are involved in kind of an everyday life.
53:36
SPEAKER_00: But those aren't really the exciting parts.
53:37
SPEAKER_00: The exciting parts are the book launches, the meetups, the vacations, the the things that were the cool new things that that we've bought or that we're being exposed to, and those kinds of things.
53:49
SPEAKER_00: So social media can really introduce this sense of jealousy and comparison into our lives.
53:55
SPEAKER_00: And Mitch mentioned that comparison is one of the most deadly things we can do for our emotional well-being.
54:01
SPEAKER_00: And how we shouldn't buy into the illusion that successful people and celebrities have a perfect life because a lot of those people end up in in rehab clinics and they end up with their lives going off the rails, and some of those people are intensely unhappy.
54:17
SPEAKER_00: So just some things to keep in mind in relationships to social media.
54:21
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I have um recently taken face taken the Facebook app off of my phone just because of this very reason, because I tend to spend a lot of time just mindlessly scrolling through Facebook and through Instagram and Twitter and whatnot.
54:34
SPEAKER_00: And I noticed that I was wasting a lot of time doing that.
54:37
SPEAKER_00: And the more that I did that, many times the unhappier I felt because I was seeing all the awesome wins of everybody else's life.
54:44
SPEAKER_00: And then I would look at my own day and go, well, I didn't really have a big win today.
54:48
SPEAKER_00: And that can just kind of produce a lot of emotional stress in our lives.
54:52
SPEAKER_00: So I just took Facebook off of my phone.
54:54
SPEAKER_00: And uh, in fact, I've been saving some time the last few days because I'm not spending as much time just mindlessly scrolling through Facebook.
55:02
SPEAKER_00: Well, friends, those are my thoughts, and I've given you a lot of different thoughts, a lot of different takeaways today.
55:07
SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, I would love to hear what you think about this episode.
55:10
SPEAKER_00: You can do that by heading over to Apple Podcasts and leaving a rating and a review, which is always appreciated.
55:15
SPEAKER_00: Or you can also leave a comment on this episode at Kentstanders.net slash 101, where you'll also find the show notes and links.
55:24
SPEAKER_00: And of course, you can always shoot me an email at Kent at KentStanders.net.
55:28
SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening today.
55:30
SPEAKER_00: Without you, the show would not exist.
55:32
SPEAKER_00: So I really appreciate you taking time to listen.
55:35
SPEAKER_00: Make sure to check out my free Ultimate Toolkit for Creative Entrepreneurs, which is packed with 24 amazing resources to help you write and self-publish your book, unlock your creative genius, grow your business, and be more productive.
55:48
SPEAKER_00: You can find the free toolkit at KentSanders.net slash toolkit.
55:53
SPEAKER_00: Well, before I sign off, I want to leave you with this quote from Walt Disney, one of my creative heroes.
55:58
SPEAKER_00: He said the way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.
56:03
SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember that you were born to create and design to make a difference.