Mindfulness x Creativity

I’m very excited because Questlove (43) will be releasing his new book Creative Quest next week (at the time I’m writing this). This is exactly a book that I want from a creative person like him. A lot of us know Questlove as that guy in Jimmy Fallon’s show. What you might not know is that The Roots (the band in Jimmy Fallon’s show that Questlove leads) is a fucking legendary band. They’ve been around since forever. Seriously, if you haven’t seen Bilal’s performance of In Ain’t Fair at NPR, get yourself an additional 12 minutes.

So why am I excited about this book? Because it’s not just stories of his exclusively musical upbringing (he was only allowed to watch music shows on TV). It’s not just about his insane encyclopaedic knowledge of music (he owns more than 70,000 records, and teaches music at the Clive Davis Institute at NYU), and it’s not just because I wanna know why his drumming is just that good. Several years ago, he published a book called somethingtofoodabout, where he interviewed 10 chefs on their creative process. Why would a musician write about food? Why would food lovers read a food book by a musician? This is a reason why I’m excited about Creative Quest: because it has stories about how he changed his thinking about the creative process.

Questlove talks about the idea of cognitive inhibition, which is basically our brains filtering whats goes into our brain storage. The filter is what you think is appropriate, right/wrong, etc. He argues that more creative people tend to have less cognitive inhibition (or have more cognitive disinhibition), because they have less bias in terms of the things then put in their brains. So technically if you can change your definition of what’s appropriate, or what’s right/wrong, you can be more open or close minded, no?

I’ve always thought that having strong values or strong opinions is a good thing. Vinod Khosla seems to agree. Knowing exactly what you like or don’t like is an indication that you know “who you are”. But Elon Musk seems to be an advocate of questioning first principles and he’s excelling in it.

Marc Andreessen (of a16z) has a different point of view: ideas should be like books, something you take reference of but not defined by.

We tend to be so defensive about our ideas that we become martyrs. Successful startups seems to succeed if they believe in their ideas for years. The “you-just-need-one-idea-to-work” mentality. We learn that intellectual property is a fantastic way to make money. Singular ideas become brands. Brands become standards. Standards become rules. Rules become restrictions.

You have to be ruthlessly open-minded and constantly willing to reexamine your assumptions. You have to take the ego out of ideas, which is a very hard thing to do. — Marc Andreessen

In a nonpolitical sense, freedom is driven by motivation and not rules. From the rule book, Michelin stars represent absolute consistency. When Noma was first in the business, Danish people hated them so much they were called the “seal fuckers”. Denmark, due to the war, was not known as the food capital of the world. At the time Noma started, Ferran Adria (of the infamous El Bulli) was still king of modern gastronomy. In a couple of years, Noma took the title of best restaurant in the world 4 times, and Rene Redzepi’s leadership brought the restaurant to incomparable heights. They won 2 stars in subsequent years, but decided to close down the restaurant 2 years ago despite their name and string of accolades. Noma went on to do pop ups in Japan and Mexico, created a TED-style food conference called MAD, created a foraging program to teach kids about plants, and built their own farm. They reopened their restaurant last year with an all new menu that focused on seafood. It’s the difference of saying “I hope we do a good job” vs. “Let’s do a good job”.

We need to think of consequences differently. If we’re not slaves to ideas, we won’t be slaves to reputation, and we won’t be slaves to success.

Ever had a relationship with a perfectionist or a person with an “all or nothing” personality? Perfectionists tend to see things in very strong ways. It’s either this, or that. Nothing else, and there’s zero margin for error. It’s very hard for them to build relationships with people (professionally or personally) because they only let people play by their rules.

So how does one be more creative?

Here’s where I think CBT will really comes in handy. CBT, or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, is a process that psychologists use so patients can understand their own thinking. CBT factors in the simple ABC:

• Activating Event — the event that triggered your behaviour (usually perceived as negative)
• Beliefs — what you beliefs are concerning the activating event
• Consequence — what the consequences of your beliefs are to the activating event (which results to your behaviour)

It’s not the easiest process to get used to, and I am still trying to get it work after 2+ years. The reason why I think CBT can be a great way to creativity is that it helps you identify those rules. Even with cognitive inhibition, you have to understand why you think certain things are inappropriate/right/wrong. Every time you feel uneasy about an idea, step back and ask yourself why. Ask yourself:

• what is it that’s making me feel uneasy
• what’s my argument against it and,
• how has my argument affect my behaviour to the thing that’s making me feel uneasy.

Despite being so called “adults”, most of us probably react to other people’s beliefs without really understanding our own belief system first. Don’t be fooled with the simplicity of CBT, because the structure of it is what’s giving it the power.

When you’ve identified some of your own rules, time for the next step. I learnt this from Anna Akana, lover of cats and a great writer/comedian/actress/content creator. The step is to understand whether your decisions are made out of growth or fear. And this is why I think Marc’s argument about pulling out ideas out of egos is extremely powerful. When we make decisions out of fear, we focus more on ourselves (oh my god I’m not contributing enough to this project! I have to find what’s missing and get the team to recognize me!). When we make decisions our of growth, we focus on the work and subject (what’s missing in this project and how can the team find it).

This is becoming more of a self-help thing.

So what does this ALL have to DO with creativity? It’s our last step, and it’s self-unconditional love: because all creative ideas consist of ideas someone’s uncomfortable with, which means someone WILL DISAGREE with it. Our second step is crucial because if you’re not making decisions our of growth, you will take all disagreements and attacks personally. If our loving parents can perform unconditional love to their children, it’s reasonable for us to do it to ourselves as well.

Creativity doesn’t always have to be artistic, but there’s an art to approaching it. I myself is trying to go through all these steps and it’s not easy.

But then again, what do I know?

P.S. Crazy ideas are awesome. Believe in yourself that you can create great things.