Follow, Listen, Rate & Review (thank you!) in Apple Podcasts
Subscribe & Listen in Spotify
Subscribe & Watch clips on Youtube
OR listen in your favourite podcast app
Episode Summary: In this episode of The Creative Genius Podcast, I talk with designer, writer, and thinker Ben Rennie, author of a new book that explores the transformative power of curiosity and creativity. Together, we unpack the dynamic relationship between curiosity, creativity, and confidence, and how this path can guide us to overcome fear and step more fully into our potential. Ben shares his personal story—sparked by a promise to his late mother—that led him to examine how people find themselves in powerful, unexpected places.
We explore the idea that creativity isn’t limited to the arts but is instead the ability to see things differently, solve problems, and bring ideas to life. Through vivid stories and practical wisdom, Ben and I explore how curiosity is the antidote to fear, how creativity naturally flows from curiosity, and how confidence is built by simply beginning—and continuing—to create.
From imposter syndrome at a Dolce & Gabbana event to finding inspiration in nature, this conversation is a powerful invitation to get curious, stay creative, and be kind to yourself in the process.
Topics Covered:
How curiosity dissolves fear
Why creativity is about seeing possibilities, not just making art
Reframing repetition: why doing what’s been done before is still meaningful
How creative confidence is earned through action
The role of environment and nature in creative flow Navigating imposter syndrome
and Honouring your path
Resources & Mentions: Ben Rennie's new book Ben’s “Wednesdays” blog on Medium Brene Brown Steve Jobs: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward…” Meredith Hite-Estevez: “Join a song already singing” Rick Rubin: on creativity and remixing existing ideas
Takeaways / Call to Action:
Follow your curiosity—it’s the best antidote to fear Just start, even if it’s been done before—your voice matters
Practice regularly and create space for your creativity
Capture your ideas on the go
Be gentle with yourself
Spend time in nature to reset and reconnect
FULL TRANSCRIPT
I grew up in a small town in Western Sydney and we wear flannelette shirts and
ripped jeans and Nirvana was my band. So when I'm in Milan at a red carpet event
with cameras flashing at famous soccer players and movie stars that I don't know,
Impostor Syndrome or The Lizard Brain is real, all of a sudden I'm questioning how
I got there, do I deserve to be here, don't talk to anyone. And I just remember
that experience being awful, but I don't know why it was awful. Why wasn't I
leaning in there to go, "I deserve to be here." What I'm learning to understand as
a 50 -year -old man versus a 30 -year -old is that we're going to find ourselves in
these environments and we need to embrace them in a way that leads to the next
chapter. We're too controlled by the fear of the unknown versus the curiosity of
possibility as to what might happen. We can come up with a thousand reasons why we
shouldn't, But isn't it much easier to just come up with a simple reason as to why
we should?
Hello, and welcome back to the Creative Genius podcast. I'm your host, Kate Shepard,
and I'm really, really happy to be here with you today. I have a truly inspiring
guest joining me, someone who has spent years reflecting on how we find ourselves in
the places that we end up, whether that's unexpected, amazing opportunities, or deeply
challenging situations. Our guest, Ben Rennie, has just launched a whole brand new
book, Diving Deep, into these ideas and others. We cover so much story.
This feels like one of those conversations that can really open up a portal inside
of ourselves that lets us access more of ourselves. So I'm honored and very grateful
to be bringing you this conversation. Ben's work explores the fascinating
interconnected relationship between curiosity, creativity, and confidence.
We often hear these words, but today you'll hear about how they flow together, how
one leads to the next, and how they can together be truly transformative. You'll
hear Ben talk about how it's not just talent or luck that gets us where we need
to be. There's something else pivotal and important, and it's something that he kept
coming back to in his own journey. So you'll hear us talk about that. We will
explore how curiosity can be our compass, particularly an overcoming fear of the
unknown, which is one of the things that holds so many of us back. We also have
some really interesting exchanges about what creativity really means, and Ben has some
really interesting takes on themes that we're all familiar with, the idea that
everything's already been done before, like writing a song or creating a new
business. Ben's take on it is actually, I found it quite provocative. I think you're
going to love to hear that too. I ask Ben about his own practice for capturing
ideas, including those fleeting moments of inspiration that hit us when we least
expect them, like when we're in the shower or driving down the road. He shares with
us his practices that have helped him to stay tethered to this source of awe and
inspiration that can come to us when we're in motion, in these ways when these
incredible ideas come to us. If you hear something in this episode today that feels
like an aha moment and want to hear about it, I would love to actually hear your
voice. Send me an email or a voice memo to hello @katecheppardcreative .com. I'll
circle back with you at the end to share what my biggest takeaways were for me
from this episode, along with a little creative challenge for you that I think you
might enjoy, it'll be fun. You know, it's something we can do together. It takes a
lot to put together these episodes for you, and I'm so grateful for all the patrons
who support me to do this work. It's one of the reasons why I pour so much love
and intention into creating the library of resources on the Creative Genius patron.
So if you love this show, if you feel like the work that I'm doing here is
important and want to support me, please head over to patreon .com
/creativegeniuspodcast and sign up and join us there. There's a whole other world of
content that I create in between these regular episodes. I do a bonus episode every
other week. I do guided meditations and worksheets, and I'm always trying to think
of ways to create content that helps you find and connect with this deep,
radiant, amazing, intelligent part of you, your creativity. So without further ado,
please enjoy this powerful conversation with Ben Ranny and I'll talk to you at the
end. Thank you for joining me today and congratulations on the launch of your new
book. You're right in the middle of it. It's so exciting. Yeah, right in the
middle. It's actually two days out from the launch, which was just in Sydney in a
beautiful little bookstore in Glee called Glee Books, which is, I think, one of
Sydney's oldest bookstores. So it was just a beautiful experience. - Wonderful. Tell
us a little bit about who you are and what your book is. - This is my first book.
That's interesting 'cause I had no intentions of ever wanting to write a book ever.
I like the idea of coffee table books and showcasing beautiful things, but in terms
of writing the idea of 70 to 80 ,000 words just never appealed to me ever.
But I've always written short forms. I've always journaled and in the 90s, 2000s, I
always had a blogger and that morphed into another blog. And so I've always written,
and I've enjoyed that. But to the point of turning that into a book just was never
on my radar. But going back to 2018, when my mom wasn't, well, she had cancer for
15 years and coming towards the end of her life, we sat down and it was just
right at that time when she lost her voice and couldn't really speak. And she said,
"Oh God, I've always wanted to write a book." I think she was going through this
sort of reflection on her life and in her mid -60s and said,
"God, I wish I read a book that I could have handed over to you." And I just in
that moment said, "It's okay, Mum, I'll write one." And that sort of hangs over
your head, that comment, because she looks so proud and so thank you. And four to
five days after she passed away, I started writing the book. And so that's where it
came from. It just came from this idea of journaling stories or experiences that I'd
been in and I think the thing that I wanted to do more than anything was try to
understand the places I found myself in, odd places that somehow I found myself in
these rooms and I wanted to understand how I got there. So the journey was really
writing about going back and trying to understand how do you end up in the places
you end up and what's the catalyst for that. So you started writing it a couple of
days afterwards and how long did it take you?
Well, it took about four years, but the But the interesting thing about it is, when
I got to the end of writing, I found the start really hard. I didn't know how to
write a book. So the idea, a good friend of mine called Tim Ross, who's written 10
books, I'd rang him and said, "What do I do?" He just said, "Just dump it on a
page. Just write. Don't think. Just write." And I found that quite cathartic. But
the challenge with that is, when you're just writing, You're all of a sudden, you
don't have much structure or much sense to what you're writing about. It just
becomes a journal, which is interesting for me, but not probably interesting for you.
So I think, Kate, if you got the first iteration, you might have read that and
gone, "What is he talking about? This was just a self -indulgent journal of my
life." And I rang Tim probably a year ago and said, "He owns a little studio up
in Byron Bay in the New South land, which is, if you don't know what you should
Google it, it's just stunning. And I rang him and said, "I'm ready to finish my
book. Can I come up and use your writer's room?" Which is, he's got up there, a
little writer's room and finish this. And when I got up there, I realized that I
hadn't read it. So I read the book for the first time and it was actually quite
awful. It was just a very self -indulgent story of all the things that I thought I
did amazing. But what I found in the thread through the middle of it was a lot of
conversations about creativity when we scratch the itch of curiosity where that takes
us. So in the midst of the madness, there was this really beautiful sort of
underlying tone around how important creativity is. One of the statistics that I read
during the writing process was 96 % of kids believe they're creative, you know,
only 26 % of adults agree with that.
So, I dug into that a bit, and up in Byron Bay, when I was in these five days
of finishing the book, I deleted 58 ,000 words out of the book and started again,
and that was a year ago. And the process from then was really fast, because I knew
exactly what I wanted to write about. I understood that creativity was the ability
to solve problems, and it powers us to do that, anyone, irrespective of whether we
think we're creative or not. So that gap between the 96 % of kids and the 26 % of
adults, that was the thing I was intrigued about. I was like, "Why does that
happen? Where did it go? And what do we do to get it back?" And that was my
motivation to finish it. Why does that happen? That's actually one of the reasons I
started doing this work, too, was that I felt, as an artist, I kept having people
come up to me and just saying, "Oh, I wish I could be creative. I wish I could
be..." And I was like, "But if you're breathing, you are. It's in all of us. It's
part of our... It's the thing that breathes your body. How could you not have it?"
But the vast majority of people that I encounter in my day -to -day life don't
believe it. And it's actually why, I believe, it's why all of the nosedive that
we're in terms of our culture and humanity, the Nose Dive that we're in is because
of this disconnection between us and creativity. But why in your, the things that
you've read and seen and researched and experienced, why do you think that happens?
It's a very polite way to call Nose Dive in regards to our culture and economy in
decline. I love that. I think there's a misinterpretation of what creativity means in
the first place. I think we're educated to think the creativity is the arts or it's
painting or it's drawing or it's design. I think it's so much more than that. And
in my understanding, it's important to know that this book wasn't an academic
research piece. So I'm not an academic, I'm a designer. So what I could do is go
back and look at the experiences and the stories that shaped where I got to, how I
found myself in meetings with Nike or Dolce & Gabbana Or Chanel or in these rooms.
What was the thing that took me there? And if it wasn't talent and I don't get
always is and if it wasn't luck and I think that plays a small part in it, then
it's something else and What I came back to was curiosity. We can do two things
with curiosity We can be led by it and go and say where does that take us? What's
the unknown beyond curiosity and we've got to a point where we want certainty in
everything. And we don't get that. So there's no certainty in anything. And I heard
a really interesting quote by Brene Brown, who I love. And she said that whenever
she's presented with an opportunity or a new business deal, she looks at what does
her life look like in a year? How does that impact her life? And she's trying to
forecast out what happens to the things that she loves now because of that choice.
And there's something that's really interesting about that. And I try to do the same
thing, but the reality is we actually don't know. That, to me, is the difference
between fear and uncertainty, and they're very different things, is coming back to
curiosity. We're scared of the unknown, but I like this idea of what if we lent
into it. The best way I can describe that is I was invited to the launch of the
Dolce & Gabbana nightclub in the mid thousands in Milan. I was over in Milan on
business and got a note under my door to come to the launch of the event. When I
got there, I grew up in a small town in Western Sydney and we were flannelette
shirts and ripped jeans and Nirvana was my band. So when I'm in Milan at a red
carpet event with cameras flashing at famous soccer players and movie stars that I
don't know, Impostor syndrome or the lizard brain is real, all of a sudden I'm
questioning how I got there. Do I deserve to be here? Don't talk to anyone? I just
remember that experience being awful. I don't know why it was awful. Why wasn't I
leaning in there to go, "I deserve to be here because I've been invited and that's
enough to know that you're worth it?" When I came home, I never told,
like I said at the book launch, I told this story and my I said, "I never knew
you went to the dead launch of the Dolce & Gabbana. I never knew you worked with
Chanel because these stories feel like a different part of my life." Whereas there's
something interesting about that, and that's imposter syndrome to a point, and I'm
not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, so I'm not going to tap into my understanding
of that. But what I'm learning to understand as a 50 -year -old man versus a 30
-year -old with an ego is that we're going to be okay. We find ourselves in these
environments and we need to embrace them in a way that leads the next chapter and
we can always connect the dots looking back but not forward, which is my favourite
Steve Job quote. So for me, why? I think we're too controlled by the fear of the
unknown versus the curiosity of possibility as to what might happen. I just try to
come back to this one rule is we can come up with a thousand reasons why we
shouldn't, Isn't it much easier to just come up with a simple reason as to why we
should? And what happens if we... I like that "what if?" I had a guest a couple
of seasons ago whose daughter, when she was four, always said, "What but if? What
about if?" And so in their family now, they always say when they're like coming up
with new ideas, "What but if we do this? What but if we do that?" And I love
that because I do feel like we are Obviously, we're led by fear.
There's so much fear swirling around. Now, I won't say more than ever 'cause this
is the only time I've ever been here on earth, but I feel like there are many of
us are making decisions in our day -to -day life and politically and culturally and
from a place of really wanting answers and really wanting to know.
And I feel like for me, what my creative practice all my life has given me is
much more comfort around uncertainty. Like when you were writing your book and you
just dumped it all out onto the page, there's an ugly stage in any creation.
There's an ugly stage in a painting. There's an ugly stage in a book. There's an
ugly stage in a culture and in a society and in a civilization. I happen to think
we're going through our ugly stage right now and that something really incredible is
about to emerge. I really do feel that way, that's a side note. - Same. - But I
think we are conditioned to believe
that we need to know. And if we can't know, then we're just not gonna do it.
We're gonna take the safe way, which is often actually a much more damaging way. So
I guess what I'm getting to ask you is around creativity being a compass, 'cause it
really seems to me like You hit a place in your life and in your work where you
really turned to creativity, which in my interpretation of that is like gut instinct,
inner knowing, desire, like this invisible set of tools that are wordless.
And they make up, together they make up this thing we call creativity, but that you
really turned to that set of instruments within you to be your compass. And I
wondered if you remembered what led to that, what was going on in your world at
that time, what else shifted when you realized, "I'm going to be somebody who
scratches the itch of curiosity rather than somebody who sits there and builds a
little brick wall around myself and stays safe inside of it." I like this idea of
the language around transition. I think it's a really soft conversation. And when we
talk about climate or a changing planet or a changing political climate. We're
thinking of the end. We're getting to these extremes of left and extremes of right.
I'm super comfortable in the middle. I think the middle is a safer place in a
sense of, I'm not opposed to the extremes, but this idea of transition is a really
beautiful way to look at our lives. So instead of going, "I'm changing this job and
that's going to be a different thing and the end is a change. If we're not
thinking of the end and we're thinking about being continually present in what's
happening and what I can control, then I like this idea of transition. And I sit
on the board for climate charity called Design Declares. And the role of Design
Declares is to align design agencies to rethink their processes to try and understand
the outcome or the endpoint of what we're creating. And what that means is if we're
designing for humans, we're thinking about human needs now, but we're not considering
the implications of the behaviors or the systems in which humans operate. So there
could be negative consequences of the thing we make. A great example is single -use
plastics. Whilst that's an incredible convenience for me, it's an extraordinary
inconvenience for the planet, which means in the end, we all lose. So this idea of
putting wind farms in the ocean is a terrifying year because I love the ocean, but
is it as terrifying as the idea of a decline in climate where all of a sudden we
don't have access to simple pleasures of energy or entities like that? When we think
about those solutions as transition solutions, we don't know what the solution to
climate change is, though we've got to find them and the way to find them is
through small bite -size evolutions of design, creativity, or making things that get
us Through that process in terms of the second part around what led me to this
idea of chasing curiosity I think I came to a really late in life. I grew up
playing sport and every other Young guy in Australia I wanted to play cricket for
Australia and then I went snowboarding and I had no in No connection or emotional
connection to anything other than myself or what I could do what I could make or
where I could go and But as you get older and you become a parent, you start to
reflect. And I think my mom's illness gave me a lot of going back and I'm trying
to understand my relationship with her, which was always a positive one. And when I
started to write the book, one of the things I started to learn was when I was a
kid, I became a designer late in life, like late. My, my role was always client
side. So I'm always working with brands and selling brands and marketing brands. It
wasn't until later that I decided I wanted to make the brand or be accountable for
what we make. So that's my transition into design in my sort of early 30s. I'm now
50. But to understand that transition into that, I started to remember these stories
where my mom would drive to her hometown and five hour drive west of Sydney and
we'd stop into old knickknacks stores and she'd pick up old things like old pieces
of furniture or old watches. And she'd always say, I wonder what this would say if
it could talk like the lives this thing has lived prior to the place that's ended
up. And a couple of things happen with that is one is you start to look at things
differently, not just as consumables, they're things that match up to someone that
can have more than one life over and over. And it also comes back to the
importance of what we make and how we make it. So these stories become really
interesting to me, I think that was my early introduction to design and creativity
is that the connection between everything we see and own and touch was made by
someone somewhere and started in a room. I find that really inspiring the idea that
someone sat down one day with a pencil and paper and penned out something like a
chair or a table or a cup. That became the evolution of our lives and we question
it, but we use it every day. And then when you want to plug yourself into that,
it's, "What can I make? What can I create?" And I also think people don't like to
do things because it's been done before. I actually think that's a reason to do it
again. The fact that it's been done, I love this idea that someone else's endpoint,
but that's your new beginning, right? That's their interpretation of where it ended
for them, your interpretation of how do we improve that thing or make it better or
make it personal to us or our community. So I don't think the idea of I had this
dream and I didn't do it because everyone's done it. I actually think that's a cop
out. I think that's the reason to start because we know it's available. We know
people need it. So let's extend and improve on that. This episode is brought to you
by my art. Beautiful jewelry made with objects from nature that bring you that
feeling of wonder and aliveness you have when you're out in the wild. I also make
a very special series of necklaces called pebble bellies. These are smooth dark
stones that I gather with permission from a beach where the Orca whales rub their
bellies right up on these smooth dark stones. It's a part of their culture and
their tradition. These pieces are infused with magic. They look beautiful layered
together. I wear one for each of my children and I call it my little pod. If If
you want to see what those look like, then get yourself on the waiting list. I
only make a certain number of them every year. Go to pebblebellies .com. Also find
them on KateShepardCreative .com or on LoveMorningMoon .com, where you'll also find all
of my nature jewelry. Sign up for each of my newsletters on those websites, for
behind -the -scenes content, discounts that aren't available anywhere else. And it's a
really wonderful way for me to share with you some of the best things that I'm
discovering in my little corner of the world that pertain to creativity and beauty
and joy that I want to share with you. I also do an incredible giveaway every
month on both of my websites for a piece of my work, and it could be you. So
sign up for the newsletters while you're there. I also love the idea of,
and again, another guest that I had, Meredith Haidt -Istavez said this a long time
ago, about joining a song that's already going, like this kind of long,
like our creative offerings, music, and she's a musician,
composers and painters, and that when you pick up where you are in this timeline
and you add to that body of work, you're joining a conversation that's been going
on since the beginning of time. There's this way that when you sit down and you're
composing a piece of music, maybe you're actually even engaging with Beethoven in
your own way and that there's this,
like you said, it's not already been done and checked off the list, but that it's
this kind of continuous flow thing that you get to add to. You get to add your
unique voice to. Totally. Yeah, I don't think anything's uniquely original and I
don't think it should be. I think that's just such a tough place to approach. And
of course, the arts is inherently creative and it's critically important to society,
culture. I don't think there's anything more important, to be honest. And I think
when you find people studying academia or going through a PhD, it's their connection
to the arts that gives them inspiration to keep evolving that and keep contributing
to academics. And I think it gives us a lift. But I don't feel like people do get
caught up in this idea of, "I want to start a clothing label, but there's enough
out there." That's a valid point. There isn't enough. We don't need more clothing
labels, but we do need better ones. We do have the ability to move into spaces
where we think about systems, climate, humanity, community impact,
and we can build things that replace the things that don't consider those things. I
just think that everything has a purpose and a place in time. The idea of you
coming up with an idea that's unique, whether it's a song or a business idea or a
book, just do it. Just write the song. There's a great interview with Rick Rubin
where he says these great artists like the Red Hot Chili Peppers come in and the
lead singer says, I can't remember his name. He says, "I want to do a song that
sounds a bit like this Johnny Cash song and that one." And so he says, and Rick
Rubin is, "Well, copy it. Just copy it because you'll never sound like Johnny Yeah.
No one will ever connect the dots. Yeah. And there's creative license in a sense of
taking from that. And I think there's truth in this. I think if you look at all
the legal cases around music in time, there's only a handful, I think, in terms
that I'm aware of where someone's gone. You just directly copied my song and that's
wrong. I don't, I feel like what we bring to something is what we bring our own
voice, our own stamp. And I don't feel like, I think we've been educated out of
that, I think we've been told maybe that you're infringing. I don't think stealing
is right. I do think bringing your own creative voice to an existing problem or an
existing idea is okay. I think it's always going to end up different and it's
always going to be unique. If that wasn't true, we'd only ever have one clothing
label, but there's a thousand. There's millions. It's similar with music. It's similar
with business. I just think the hardest part is starting, then we can really give
ourselves a lot of reasons why we shouldn't. It's again, coming back to that one
reason why we should, which is also hard, but empowering.
In your book, you talk about creative confidence. What has creative confidence meant
for you and was there a time you didn't have it? How did you build it? What is
it? Why is it important? I think it comes back to those places at the start where
we're talking about how do you find yourself in those rooms. I think that is
creative confidence. it's the ability to start. And this come up, my book launched
the other night, we had a nice sit down with 100 people in the room. And one of
the questions was, how do I start creating? And I think you've got to create space
for it. You've got to come back and say, what are the things that are stopping me
from creating or being creative? And what are the things that I can do to give
myself the best chance to start the thing that I wanted to start? So Confidence
comes from, if we're talking about sport, it comes from repetition and practice.
There's a thing I write about in the book, a chapter, that when my brother and I
grew up, my parents owned an indoor cricket center. Now I'm pretty sure in Canada,
you don't know what that is, but that's probably in the terms of basketball, it's
probably like having a shooting lane in your house, or in baseball, it's probably
like having a batting lane with a batting machine in your garden. So, we grew up
with that advantage and growing up in the 90s in Western Sydney, excuse me,
with that machine, my brother and I had an advantage over everyone else, probably in
Sydney. So, we have some great junior records of great results because of the
access, the environment shaped our potential in a way. But it only does part of the
job. So the next part of that is, okay, that doesn't mean I'm going to go pro
because there's a lot more other things we need to consider, nutrition, health,
performance. But the one thing that I can take away from that is that the
repetition gave me confidence and it gave me the ability to walk into a game on a
Saturday. And whilst the other young lads had their dads throwing them balls on the
weekend until their dad's shoulder got tied after about 25 minutes, My brother and I
had a machine that would bowl us a thousand balls during the week. Of course, going
into a Saturday, we have an advantage and that's confidence. So,
in a similar way in business, if you want to write a book, start writing yourself,
start journaling. One of the things that I tried to do to give myself confidence to
write was to wake up in the morning with my laptop open with a blank page in
front of me, just And it's I'm not because I know the idea of getting up and
rebooting and starting and opening word is probably just a couple of steps too many
for me to go right at six in the morning. Do I really want to write, but you
just got to give yourself the best chance and the idea of writing 58 ,000 words
that I deleted gave me the confidence to write the 58 ,000 words that I wanted
people to hear that I was comfortable with people hearing. And if I go back to
that dodging a butter in nights where I walked in the room feeling terrified, I
wouldn't walk in the room today feeling terrified. If I saw Ronaldo, the famous
soccer player, I'd probably walk up and say, "Hello," because we're in the same
environment. We've both earned the right to be there. That's confidence. That's
creative confidence, but it's also justifying by being brave enough to look back and
understanding the things that you did that were valuable and brave that give you the
reward of being in environments that look a little bit different, a little bit
scary. Creative confidence is just the ability. When curiosity starts to pop up for
you, you chase it. I'm just imagining the listener who's sitting there listening to
this right now going, "That sounds amazing. I'd love to have the confidence to
believe that I deserve to be in those rooms or that I even have the confidence
that I deserve to write down the thoughts that come through my head." But I just
feel so stuck in my story of Who I am and what's possible for me and my imposter
syndrome and I actually can't see a way out of it. What would you say to that
person? I feel that too. So I go through the same thing. So even now. So I don't
feel like the idea of this isn't creative confidence, isn't to never ever feel
stuck. I feel like being stuck is okay. I feel like we should be stuck from time
to time. It's a time to reflect and pause and work out a way to take that step
forward. And whatever that step is, And I love this term of we can look at our
fail stories with I talk about my fail stories as often as I talk about my wins.
I think that's great for me to try to soften them to be more comfortable in the
idea that I made all these mistakes, but I'm still here and I'm still okay. And I
feel like I've had businesses that have just not worked that have gone bro. And
that was devastating for me at the time. When my When my business went broken in
the mid -2000s, I had a baby. My daughter, Mia, was six months old. We had to sell
our house. We had eight company cars on the lawn, and it wasn't through anything
that I did. It just was a circumstance that managed like all of a sudden, this
business wasn't viable anymore. It was also an experience. I was young, guessing my
way through this business, which I suppose gives me a lot of confidence now that if
you can make it up then, you can probably do a better job of making it up now we
just learn. But one of the things that happened to me was I was really depressed
and I was flat and I wasn't going out of the house and I was like, "This is it.
I've failed. My life is over. This is me now for the rest of my life." And my
mate Josh Evans rang me a few times and said, "You've got to come out and have a
drink." And he knew that I loved swimming the ocean. So he rang me and said, "Come
down to Bondi Beach on the weekend and we'll go for a swim out to sea and we'll
go around the headland and we'll come on in." And so I said, "Okay, let's do
that." My wife said, "Well, go early because I don't want to bump into friends in
Bondi." Obviously, no Bondi Beach. It's a very famous Australian beach, and so I had
a shop in Bondi at the time, and so we get down to Bondi and we go for a swim
and I jump in the water and I'd said to Josh, "I just don't want to see anybody.
I don't want to talk to anyone. I don't want to talk to old staff. I'm a failure
in my head. I don't want to see people." So I jump in the ocean and we swim out
to sea, and I think I'm about 400 meters out to sea, And I hear someone call my
name because I'm a pretty distinct ball guy, floating out to sea, and they know I
like to swim in Bondi. And so it's Amanda and she looks at me and she says, "Ban,
what are you doing out here? Hey, hey, going in." The first thing she asked me is,
"How's business?" Now, to paint a picture, I'm 400 meters out to sea, floating in
the ocean in one of the busiest beaches in Australia. And I'm thinking the first
question, everything I'm trying to avoid was just, it it came to me straight away.
Interestingly, in that moment, her partner at the time was a guy called Darren
Prowse. Now, Darren Prowse was a photographer for News of the World in London, and
he's really famous for taking a photo of Lady Diana in her car accident and not
releasing the photo. See, he owns the photo, the only one of her where you can see
her body in a car accident after she passed away. He's quite famous for that photo,
More importantly for not releasing it to the media and keeping that and he said he
would never release it He later went on to become the mayor of Adelaide So he was
there and I didn't know him But he's distinctive through this mohawk that he had
and so I recognized him It was all wet and he came over and said hey mate Hey
going he's got a really vocal Aussie accent and he swears a lot and I won't swear
When the same way he did but he asked me how I was going and he could just tell
that I just did not want to have a conversation with either of them and I just
said, "You know what? My business has just, yeah, I've had a tough time. I've just
wound it up and I'm just going through that." I thought, "What does it feel like
to be really honest about this?" As we're treading water and he laughs and says,
"Oh, mate, you know what?" He said, "If there's anything that we need to learn
about that," he said, "If you look," because he could tell I was a bit flat. He
said, "Look back at the beach," and he said, "On that beach, we've got doctors,
lawyers, backpackers." He said, "There's people who write, sing, dance," and he and
there's one thing that we've all got in common today. We're doing this same thing
for free. Good times don't cost anything. Being in nature doesn't cost anything. That
was my moment in my life where I went, two things. One is, we can't avoid it. We
can't avoid our past. The things that shaped us to that point, good or bad, doesn't
mean that we can't reset and reimagine what tomorrow can be or look like.
I think The other thing too was that connection to nature was the catalyst for me
to go in the next chapter of my life. I don't want to lose that. I had lost that
prior. When I'm rebuilding the next phase of my life, I'm trying to do it in
places that I love and environments that light me up. We talked offline before about
what Vancouver does for you. When you talk about trees, your face just lit And that
was the thing I was trying to reconnect with was do it in the places that I love
and that gives us creative confidence. And then to do it around the people we love
and we connect with, that gives us even more confidence because it's going to
reassure us that we're heading in a direction that is valuable. And when we're not,
they're going to be honest with us that say maybe you need to pull back. So if
anything, I take away from that story and it's how I actually end the book. So now
you don't need
Yeah, he's still there to read the book. So when you get to the end, to me, it's
this idea of we can't avoid our past and having comfort in that and it means that
you can move forward with confidence. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm glad you brought up
nature. I feel like there's a huge correlation between nature for me and creativity.
There are so many parallels in the things that I see. I'll go for a walk in the
woods and I'll see how the little stream is coming down around a a tree and the
rocks are placed there. I just think no artist could have put this here.
There's so much inspiration and it's showing us so much. We're so disconnected from
nature and creativity. I don't think that's a coincidence.
It's one of those things where eating well or lifting weights or taking your
vitamins or yoga or whatever, there's these things that we have in our lives that
when we're doing them, we know we feel better. We know we feel good. We know
things work more smoothly, yet we avoid doing them.
I know that I'm a better person when I'm journaling every day or going for a walk
in the morning, first thing with the dog. And I also know when I'm falling out of
it, that things start to feel crappy and then my life starts to go into a bad
direction. We're doing that collectively as humanity. Why? How can we pull ourselves
out of that and go back to the things that serve us better that we know we love,
that we know actually make us feel good? I think we're going to be less harsh on
ourselves and just be a bit kinder to ourselves and kinder to humanity. And I think
that's what nature does. I think nature is soft and we're not. I don't think humans
are, but I think we need to work out how to be a little bit kinder. I live in
nature, I live 400 meters from a beach in a very small coastal town, one hour from
Sydney. Excuse me, that was a very deliberate choice to do that. It's expensive and
it's challenging to live here. It's a hard place to live because when you want to
choose to live by the beach, then that's a luxury. So for me, it's what do I need
to do in my life to be present in these environments and these places with my
family that give me that back. And today at lunchtime, I'll leave my home studio.
I also have an office in Sydney, but I'll leave my home studio and I'll walk out
of my door, 400 meters, I'll do 400 stairs to the top. I'll look at the view of
the ocean down the coast and I'll take a photo and I'll come back down and I will
do my best work after that. Do my best work. But I don't want to do that walk
because it's hard to do it, but I will do it today. I'll find a way to do it. I
just think we need to be kinder. I'm obsessed with nature. When I'm in nature, I
feel more at comfort, more at ease. And if we can learn to find a balance between
doing the things we love, and when I say that, I don't mean passionate. I think
the things we're good at and get really good at those things. I think we get a
bit caught up in the idea of chasing our passion. I don't know if that's right. I
think we get passionate about the things we're good at. So I think when we take
the pressure off ourselves to find what it is we're meant to be here for, and we
just experiment and do the things we're good at, and and understand that those
things we can do that we're good at, hopefully have an impact on society and
community and health on the planet, then all of a sudden, we just had to build an
ecosystem that's a positive one. Here's Scott Galloway talk about anyone who's ever
set folly or passions, usually set by someone who's worth millions of dollars
standing on a podium, who's found 100 times and finally found their riches. There's
some truth to that, and I don't feel like anyone at 20 knows what their passion
is. I didn't, but I did know looking back that I loved being in nature, I liked
snow sports, I liked being in the ocean. The one thing I've learned about surfing,
I'm a surfer, and I don't do it enough, but I'm okay on myself about that. I've
got friends in my community who surf every day and they cannot miss it, and that's
also cool. But for me, the thing I like about it is it's like meditation. I'm a
bad meditator, but I like the idea of meditating, but I don't do it. So when I'm
in the ocean and I'm in nature. I'm sitting on a board. There's no notifications.
There's no screen. There are no pings. For me, it's forced meditation. I'm in the
water and I'm around no one but nature and myself with my own thoughts. That's a
hard thing to do today. It's hard to get away from a screen or a notification,
which I quite like. I like the idea of this modern technology because we can live
in the places that we couldn't in the past and we can travel and still create and
still make and still dream big. So it gives us opportunity, but we've got to be
really disciplined about how do we step away from it for a moment to really
understand who we are and where we are.
What are your other creative practices? Where do you play the most with creativity?
Writing. Absolutely writing, for sure. I suppose that's my creative outlet. Not so
much journaling, but writing. I try to write every Wednesday on my blog called
Wednesdays on Medium. I try to do that every week. It's something that I, every
second or third week, I forget to do or don't do. I need to have something to
write about. But the discipline's there to do it every week. That's my goal. But
I'm comfortable in the idea that, okay, to miss. I get to share ideas, to break
down things that are complex in my head and put them out and bite them. - Do you
give yourself prompts? I'm just thinking for me, when most of my work is very
physical, I'll sculpt or I'll make jewelry or I'll do a physical thing. And if I
have creative block, I'll just go start cleaning my studio and being near my
supplies. And all of a sudden, I don't want to clean up anymore. Oh, there's this
hunk of clay that I've been meaning to play with and then I'm off. And that's how
I've always dealt with creative block. But with writing, I'm curious, like, how do
you deal with that? And I love, I also, I love that you give yourself grace
around, look at the context of my week, I just did a book and I'm doing this or
I have the flu or whatever it is, like being, I love that you're being yourself.
But there's also this thing that creeps in sometimes where it's like that part of
your ego that wants to keep you small. That's, oh yeah, don't, you don't need to
write this week, don't worry, you're fine. You don't need to. And before you know
it, you're stuck and you're stagnant. So we have to kind of steward ourselves
through those times a little bit. So what do you do? Are there things that you do
to prompt yourself out of writer's block or what's your process? - Exactly what you
do. So I definitely rearrange my office every tidiest, every three to four days.
It's organization, it's putting things in order. And also too, I've got this sort of
really weird habit of moving furniture. Things feel stuck. Then it's a rearranging of
the lounge room or the living room and it's moving picture frames to other spaces
so that world looks a little different to get me thinking differently. It drives my
wife crazy she literally drops a nuts she sees a coming and here we go we're
moving furniture and tables I have a very big A3 sketchbook which I lives on my
desk irrespective of where my desk is I have it. And I write and draw and I make
notes and when something inspires me, I make a note about why and I write it down.
I do that all the time. The first version of my book was called How to Save the
World from the Shower, which the publisher quickly said, "That's a really bad name.
Let's change that." The idea of it was, when we're in the shower, we have these
great ideas and we think about all the things we can do today, all the businesses
we could make or the business problem we had yesterday that we could start tomorrow
to to solve that. We get out of the shower and we just forget and we get on with
our life. Years ago, back in probably the late 2017 -2018,
I started to take a whiteboard marker into the bathroom and ride on the shower wall
with my action plans, the things I wanted to create.
That soon became a discipline that I didn't need to write it down anymore. I would
just remember and get out of the shower, put it into my journal, into my diary.
But I still have that habit. The shower is a really interesting place and so is
driving and being in traffic. So what I do now in traffic, if I'm listening to a
good podcast and something comes up that's great, I actually press pause, open up my
phone on my dictator and talk into it. And I transcribe that into notes and I keep
those notes. And it's just a way to get things out of my head into paper in a
moment of clarity, because we don't have them very often. Our heads are a little
cloudy. These things for me are really important. - Well, we often have them, we're
in motion. I feel like that's the trick about them is that we often have them when
we're in motion and when we're in motion, that's often a tricky time for us to
capture them and write them down. So we do have to create some sort of like
supports for ourselves to capture that stuff. So we can come back to it later.
- Yeah, I read in the Harvard Business Review, that 70 % of our ideas happen outside
of work. So in our lives in our daily lives. We're 70 % of the ideas that we have
around what we want to do or create or make happen over coffee with friends or in
the places. So I think things like that are a great thing to do, catch up with
friends, have conversations, have coffee, sit on the beach on the headland and meet
someone new and talk about life. Great ideas come from these things. I feel like
they're inspiring and I love urban places as much as I love nature, but I couldn't
live urban environment all the time, you know, I feel like Vancouver is a beautiful
balance of that. A really rare balance of North Vancouver is it feels like you're
in nature, but you're right in a city. It's really cool. I spent a lot of time in
Salt Lake City in Utah, and I have a very similar connection to Salt Lake City
that you have to Vancouver because I feel like within 20 minutes you're in Park
City, Utah, or in the mountains, or you're in Moab, or you're in St. George. You
can have access to Earth and the planet and dirt or snow or water, all within a
very close space of the urban environment. And the thing I like about urban
environments is the arts, the connection to things that we make and build. And I'm
always inspired by old signs on walls that have been there for 40 years, that have
been embedded in the brick, or new signs that show people the way to walk or go
or direct them. So they're the things that I find really interesting. And so urban
environments give me that creativity, the Earth connects me and gives me space to
think about how I want to contribute to that. Yeah. And I think that is number one
key is even if you live in a really urban environment and you can't go and be
hugging trees all afternoon or surfing or almost extreme examples for 99 % of the
people who are on Earth today, like we don't all live in these more rural
environments, But it's never as far as you think, you could go to a little park in
a city and just, sometimes I'll just go and I'll be like, "Let me hear for the
bird." And if you switch channels for what you're tracking, you can hear it, like
all of a sudden, "Oh yeah, there's the birds. They're right there. They're making
noise too." And I think it just like your journal of inspiration, you'll find more
of what you're tracking. If you're tracking for it and you're looking for it and
you're trying to capture it when it comes to you or notice it when you see it, it
then starts to become like, "Oh, a bigger part of what you're aware of." Yeah,
totally gray. Yeah, I totally agree with that. So you say in your book, Lessons for
Creativity, you say that's a book for people who feel stuck or disconnected. If
somebody is right now going, "Okay, yeah, that's me. I'm feeling stuck. I'm feeling
disconnected. Maybe I need to read your book. What do you think is like one of the
big lessons from the book that you wish that that person and everybody could take
heart right now? - I just think that if there's a, the interesting thing about this
book, I'm not an academic. So I wrote about my stories and my experiences and I've
tried to understand what the insight was that got me into those places. And the
biggest takeaway for me from this book is the idea of we're all curious about
something, but we're not all willing to lean into that curiosity and find out where
it goes. And if anything, I think it's a disservice to you. I think the amount of
people I know who I have three kids, I couldn't do it on my own. I'm a wonderful
parent with a
I'd be a nightmare on my own. And I always wonder, I've got friends who are single
moms who go, "Oh, I couldn't do a business so I wouldn't know where to start," but
they want to do it. It's like, nothing is harder than what they're doing. Nothing
will ever be harder than being a parent. Nothing in your life. And I'm always
amazed that we can do that, but we don't believe we could do the other thing.
Like, it's extraordinary that the things that we do that we don't think twice about.
Well, I've got friends who have moved from London to Sydney and live in Sydney and
have wanted to start a business but don't know where to start or don't have the
confidence to do it. It is not as hard to start a business as to move a country,
to lift your family and move them. I think we just have perspective. The reason
those businesses might not start or the reason a friend of mine might not have gone
and done the business is probably more fear than anything. We tell ourselves the
reasons why we can't. To understand the enemy of fear is curiosity. The outcome of
curiosity is creativity, and to follow that path is creative confidence. If you're
scared, chase creative curiosity. The fear will go away, it will dissipate. I
guarantee it. I just think it's so easy to get caught up on the stuck or the
fear, and I just know in my experience, and again, this is not about academic
research or coming up with any science as to why, But in my experience, following
curiosity, that fear, that voice in your head just fades. It just goes. And all of
a sudden you find yourself down the line working on something that you always wanted
to work on and that's cool.
- I just want to go back to something you said earlier about being more gentle with
ourselves. I have this, it's a little heart -shaped wooden bowl and I have a little
deck of angel cards in it. angel cards in it. One of the very first podcasts I
ever sat down and recorded, I had this little nudge to pull a card before each
interview. I don't even know what it was about. I had this idea to do this and I
did it. I've done it for every episode. Before I sit down and I meet with my
guest, I pulled this little card out. Then I love to tell you at the end of the
show, at the end of the interview, what that word was because it's often one of
the big from the episode that I love the most. And it is true again today. So the
word that I pulled was compassion. And I feel like with our creative practices,
there is that grace is such a magic ingredient when we can be gentle with it. You
got stuck, you didn't wanna do the thing today. You think a lot of us artists
types, creative types, and maybe just humans in general are a little bit all or
nothing. If I didn't do the blog post every Thursday that I said I would, there's
no point in doing any of it. I'm just going to give it all. It's all for nothing
now. We do that to ourselves. And so I love that you, so I wanted to just
underline that you brought that to us today because I think that's such an important
thing to drop into our hearts and just have growing is that self -compassion is so
important. The very last question, and it's The last question that I ask all my
guests is the billboard question. So this idea that if you could whisper through
this magical billboard into the ear and heart of every human alive right now, the
thing that you feel is the most important thing that creativity can teach us to
help us heal from all of these imposter syndrome and negative stories that we have
and limiting beliefs that we have about ourselves? But it was the billboard size.
What would it be? What would you put on that billboard?
It would be the weekend. It would be a billboard of weekend. It would be a picture
of humanity saying that we're accountable and responsible, not our governments, not
our leaders, not what they promise us. It is literally down to us. And the
billboard, to me, would be hopefully powering to individuals or people to go, "I'm
responsible for the outcome of this country. I'm responsible for the outcome of this
community," and bring it back to the small things that we can do every day. We're
talking before about politics, and I'm happy to get into politics, but there was a
real rise in Australia around independent leaders coming up and stepping up into
communities. For the first time, there's a majority of independent leaders getting a
voice. And what that means is that people who want to see change are putting their
hand up and doing something about it. And it's not just the two major parties, it's
independent stepping in and going, I'm going to, I think I can do a better job of
what you have done and the community getting behind them and saying, yes, you can.
And that's empowering because like in Sydney, we had Zali Stegel who was a who was
a professional Olympic skier, who's now a leader of one of our biggest electorates
in Sydney, who is having a voice for climate, for community, for health, for
creativity. And these things matter. And I think that Zali was a skier.
And now she's a political leader, a voice for community. And that's really important.
For me, I think that we don't feel like we can. I feel like people think that
it's someone else's responsibility to do these things. And I spent 10 of the last
12 months in America. I've been in the U .S. at both times when Trump is
inaugurated. And it's amazing how many people go, "It's going to happen now. You
watch. You wait and see what he does." And I just think that the difference with
that in a country of 330 million people, Australia being a country of 30 million, I
think we have accountability here to go that what I do and what my vote says
matters a lot, but also how I behave and how I act in my community matters more.
So we don't. I think it's scary when we empower our government to have the answers
for us. I feel like we just need to be able to go, "What are the things that I
can contribute or make or do?" The second billboard, if we're going to have two
next to each other, we'll be around climate, the planet, we're going to be around
the climate. And just going, the things that we choose to buy, to embrace,
I read the other day that, but To say thank you to ChatGPT costs a glass of
water. I know. And that glass of water is energy, so that glass of water is wasted
for life. It becomes dirty water. So I just think we need to be a little bit
smarter, a little bit wiser about how we build our future, and that is on
everybody, not on our, just on our leaders. I love that you said that. I think
it's, I'm coming, I'm 48 years old, and I grew up in a very political town. My
mom was a news producer, and my dad was a political correspondent on our Parliament
Hill. And conversations on the dinner table were very, my mom was a NDP,
which is a more independent socialist union kind of party, and my dad was a
conservative, previous, but not far right conservatives of today,
but traditional. And there was a lot of arguing and a lot of chaos. And also in
media and journalism, there's a lot of drugs and drama. And so I just saw that
whole world and was like, nope, I'm going to take a hard right. I'm going to go
over here and be an artist. And I really, and I acknowledge so much privilege in
my life to be able to do that. Coming to now at this point in our history,
our collective history, seeing what a critical point this is in our history,
and I actually cannot No, I cannot continue to not be involved and engaged.
In some cases, enraged about some of these things, and I'm hitting the runway hard,
like I'm learning about the American political system and even more about our own
political system. And I'm learning things about collapse and it's a lot all at once.
And from my creative brain, and we touched about, this is what I wanted to come
back with. My creative mind and personality, when I look at what's happening from a
system's perspective on Earth and with humanity, I get really excited because to me,
the intelligence of the universe is basically saying, "Yeah, no.
What you guys are doing, how you did it is you're all rational mind. You're no
creative mind. You're glitching. You're going in circles and you're in a downward
spiral. You're destroying your planet You're destroying each other. You're there's so
much hate there and she I feel like she's a she is coming in and just going No,
we're gonna wipe that all out all that dies now and So I'm excited about collapse
in a weird way because the world that we created where Saying thank you to chat
GPT is ruining water That's not what any of us want anywhere anywhere in our
systems. None of us want that, but what you've said is really important. It is not
our job to point fingers at corporate decision makers or political decision makers or
lawmakers or to be in charge of that. Actually, we really need to be in charge of
that. And it doesn't need to be that you quit. What I'm learning as I come into
this work even more deeply, it doesn't mean I have to change directions. I can
still be an artist and get involved in that. I can still contribute to my community
in new and meaningful, like really meaningful ways without needing to become a full
-time activist. And I just want everyone who's listening to this to think about
probably the thing that you love to do the most is the thing that will actually
help the collective the most. And so just we can do it and we need you to do it
and we need to stop being scared of our gifts and actually engaging in the world
with them in brave ways. Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree with that. I agree
100%. I was so interesting. You look at our leaders and there's, Elon is talking
about sending humans to Mars, which I originally just sort of thought was hilarious.
And now I'm starting to think it's a good idea because the quicker that guy can
get to Mars, the better. Starting with him. Yeah. That's right. I think have fun up
there. Yeah. I just think it's such an odd thing to think that a leader of a
country thinks that Mars is a better investment than Earth or humanity or the people
here. I was directly impacted by the USAID and the Doge Cuts. We had a project in
the US with an organization that was funded by USAID. And it's interesting when you
are doing work that feels like it matters. It's really creative work. We spent a
lot of time and energy into getting this relationship with this climate organization
in the US. We said that up, we got the contract and then that was 700 staff deep
and now they're 10. These guys are doing climate research, climate impact. I couldn't
feel like my connection to that was, I can't feel like there's anything more
important in my life than I need to be doing right now. Then for that to be cut
because of money or because of potential fraud or potential waste, I just can't
connect the dots. So there's something else happening here that doesn't add up. But
in terms of what I can do is, okay, that stopped for us, but that doesn't mean I
need to stop in terms of what I can do to contribute to climate. So some of the
work that I then look at my role as a designer, and when I say design, I don't
feel like we need to think of design in a sense of physical logos or websites. We
need to think about design in terms of making things that solve problems, and that
can be language, wayfinding, environments, and products. But more importantly,
we need to start looking at the systems in which these designs and these products
live. So I get to come back to that and look at systemic design foundations, so
the foundations in which designs operate. So all of a sudden, my work becomes
different. So I go, "Okay, I've got to be a bit more accountable now because
someone stole that from us, from all of us, that opportunity to solve that problem
for that climate fund that I couldn't control, that you could control. So what is
it that I can control? It's the work I do every day. And so maybe there's a
problem with design. Maybe design is broken. Maybe if we can build better systems
for design, when we're not designing for humans, we're designing for humanity, then
how does that look for me? It empowers me to come back and do better and go,
"Okay, that was stolen. I had no control, but I have control over what I do next.
What I do next is improve the work, improve the rate, improve the conversation,
improve the process, and hopefully impact systems and the way that we operate and
have conversations like this, which hopefully one person hears and says, "That's cool.
I'm going to be a bit more accountable for what I make." That takes what we've
been talking for an So it's a small piece to give and hopefully we all collectively
feel more empowered to be accountable for our place in the world. So yeah, I think
that's why politics is so important, it's personal and people don't like to make it
personal, but it's so personal, it's all it is personal, it impacts people's lives.
So we better voting is critical, understanding why we vote is critical and
understanding what we're guiding for is even more critical. But more important than
that is being accountable for the things we do every day that contribute to a
better society.
- Yeah, and I'm back to the beginning of our conversation again, where you were
talking about being on the red carpet with the flash bulbs and the people and
feeling, oh, I don't belong here. I don't feel like I have a right to be here. I
think a lot of people feel that way about politics. That's a world where these
People live up on these gilded rooms and they're important men and they make big
decisions and I'm not smart enough to be in that room. Important men. You know what
I mean though? The men who rule the world. And what I'm seeing is that I've not
diagnosed, but I do believe that I have some undiagnosed ADHD. I have problems that
can't visualize the way other people do. I'm not the same as all the people around
me and I've always felt less than because of that. But, And what I'm seeing is
actually those differences give me a way of seeing the world that isn't like
everybody else. And so I can say in a comment every once in a while that can hit
people differently. So even in my own weird, what I would call dysfunctional brain,
I'm able to offer something to the group that could be useful. And I feel like
that's our job now as we mature as humans and mature as humanity is understanding
that our weird dysfunctional gift containers that we have of these weird little
collections of gifts that are so different across people are actually so required.
All of those individual voices are so required and important, obviously voting, but
also engaging, like getting to know the people who represent you. I spent half an
hour on the phone with my MP the other day, and I've never done that in my in my
life. And it was a great conversation. And I was able to say, obviously, you have
my vote, but here's what I'm worried about. And I challenge you on this. And I
don't totally agree with you on that. So how can we work together to that
conversation felt amazing? I thought that world was off limits to me. I never
thought that I was allowed to be in that world. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. There's
an, I feel like there's an awakening happening. I feel like these things are being
broken so that we can step to the big picture. I think that's true. I think
there's a pattern of everything where things break and we start to go, okay, what
can I do to resolve this? You definitely see that it's extraordinary, especially
what's happening in the states. It's so hard to watch. Yeah, it's hard to watch.
But like I said, I'm hopeful, I'm cautiously optimistic. I don't know the timeline
of it, but it seems to be faster than I thought it would be. It's so hopefully
we'll just burn it. Because that's the thing that keeps coming to me in my
meditation is I keep, there have been days when I've just been like, why don't you
just crash their plane? And I know that's an evil thought, but the voice that I
keep getting from wherever that voice comes from is no sweetheart. These guys have
to burn themselves out. This is this darkness has to come up and out into the
light so that it can burn. And then you'll be able to build a new thing. And your
job, because you even know that this is something that's happening, is to be on the
team of the people who are building the new thing. So get to work. And that's what
this conversation is about. And that's what this work is about, is building the new
world. - Yeah, I love it, Kate. It's so good. It's so good. - Thank you so much
for joining me. That was awesome. - Yeah, no worries, thanks for having me. It was
cool. I loved it. It's good to catch up. Thank you for having me. - What a
powerful conversation that was. One of my biggest takeaways was this idea that
curiosity is the enemy of fear, you know, where we were so wrapped up in needing
to know how it's all gonna turn out that we can sometimes miss the invitation to
be curious about what's possible, which is so oftentimes the hand that's reaching out
from the other side, welcoming us into the world that we belong. When Ben said the
words, the outcome of curiosity is creativity, It just landed for me. This isn't
about making art. It's about looking at the world differently, about saying, well,
what about if I, you know, seeing the potential and asking, what can I make?
What are my gifts? What am I uniquely suited to offer this moment? And I
particularly love the idea that the fact that something has been done before is
actually more reason to do it that someone else's end point can be your new
beginning. It reminds me of my conversation with Meredith Haidt -Estemez when she
talked about joining a song that's already singing. That was such a beautiful
episode, by the way. Go back and listen to hers if you haven't heard it yet. And
the idea that we can cultivate our own creative confidence simply by starting. You
know, our creative muscles and prowess, are built through practice.
That starts with acknowledging the many brave and valuable things you've already done.
Remember at the beginning of the show, when I said that I had an idea for
something we could do together? When Ben was talking about capturing his ideas in
his sketchbook, this book that's always with him no matter where he goes. Those
brilliant thoughts that come to us when we're in motion. I was thinking, wouldn't
that be a fun thing for us to do together.
So I'm gonna make the commitment over the next couple of weeks until I talk to you
again to dedicate space in my daily sketchbook practice for recording some of the
things that make me feel awe, coincidences that make me pause and think,
huh,
things that I feel incredibly grateful, even if they might be really small,
possibilities that come up in my imagination. All of those things like that,
I'm gonna capture them in my sketchbook. I'm gonna make little notes about them. I'm
gonna draw them. I'm gonna paint them.
And then we can come back together and compare notes. So if you wanna join me in
doing that, please do that. And like I said at the beginning of the show, send me
an email, send me a voice memo, join the Patreon and join the conversation there.
I'd love to be in an even deeper connection with you. The last thing I want to
leave you with today is when Ben and I started talking about the state of the
world, the current state of the world, I said something that upon reflection kind of
surprised me. I didn't realize it was something that I consciously knew, but I
realized I've been thinking this for a while now, how our creative practices are
kind of a safe playground for us to discover deeper truths about ourselves and the
world that we live in. Facing uncertainty in a painting feels much safer than facing
uncertainty in a relationship or in a life decision. And so in that way, our
creative practice gives us a playground to practice. So when Ben and I were talking
at the current state of the world. And I referred to it as our ugly stage.
It was kind of an aha moment for me. And it gave me a lot of peace to think
about humanity as a creation in and of itself. And every creation has an ugly
stage. We're in one of our ugly stages right now. And ugly stages are always the
precursor to growth. So if you're feeling really down about how things are going,
take heart, and open up to the possibility that this is just the ugly stage before
the incredible beauty emerges, which you are part of co -creating. So I'll leave you
with this today, what would be available to you if you started writing down all the
inspirations and gratitudes, curiosities, what ifs that come to you?
And what would happen if you simply started down the path towards one of them.
You can find out more about Ben Rennie and his work, including his book and blog,
Wednesdays, in the show notes for this episode and on my website. There you'll also
find the calls to action we discussed and ways that you can lean even more deeply
into your own curiosity, creativity, and confidence. Thank you for joining me on the
Creative Genius podcast again. Until next time.
Please keep my jewelry or paintings, and especially gratitude birds which keep selling
out in mind next time you're looking for a treat for yourself or for a loved one.
You can find everything I've mentioned on katecheppardcreative .com. Thank you for
being here, for opening your heart and for listening. My wish and intention for this
show is that it reach into your heart and After the beautiful thing that lives in
there, may you find and unleash your creative genius.
Leave a comment