Welcome to five-minute magic from Mindful Creative Podcast. A short bonus episode, sharing tips and insights from the book's pages of the same title. 
 
Every week I'll share one or two ideas that can give you an actionable takeaway for your creative process or work/business, or just the food for thought for the weekend ahead. 

These bonus episodes share content from the audio book, and you can find the link to the full version in the show notes. ~

Mindful Creative: How to understand and deal with the highs and lows of creative life, career and business

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[00:00:00] Welcome to five minute magic from the mindful creative podcast. A short bonus episode, share and tips and insights from the pages of the book of the same title. Every week I'll be sharing one or two ideas that can give you an actionable takeaway for your creative process, your work, your business. Or just food for thought for the weekend ahead. These episodes share content from the audio book, and you can find the link to the full version in the show notes below. 

The first chapter in the book is titled Creativity vs. Human and it touches on many different ways of how creativity makes us feel, what we do with it, how it amazes us, bedevils us, chases us, defines us, eludes us. the first two sections I would like to share Creativity Starts With A Blank Piece Of Paper, and The Highway Of Life And Creativity.

And if you've listened to the first series of this podcast, you would have heard [00:01:00] me mention it quite a few times. Creativity Starts With A Blank Piece Of Paper is, almost a sort of open meditation on the topic of how we always could go back to basics. I was very conscious of not saying, not saying should, how we could go back to basics, because It was written as a response to the blind mass hysteria when the generative AI sort of poked its head above the parapet and everyone started panicking because There's something beautiful about just a blank piece of paper.

I liken it to a boxing ring where the careers are made or terminated. And yeah, I think, you know, generative AI is getting a lot more interesting and a lot more capable, but it's still about a person who uses the tools. The second section, the highway of life and creativity, is very much about the fact thatwe don't always know where we're heading and what we're doing [00:02:00] and what we're trying to achieve.

And we can be easily misled by people around us trying to make us believe that where they're heading is more glamorous, interesting or better. Is it?

Chapter 1. Creativity vs. Human. Creativity starts with a blank piece of paper. It's almost impossible to define exactly what creativity means to us. That's part of its magic. We could list verbs for every letter of the alphabet to describe it, and we still wouldn't quite capture it. It can amaze us, bedevil us, chase us, define us, elude us, frustrate us.

Sometimes it seems to use us as much as we use it. But however we think about creativity, if we go right back to the beginning, we will always find the same thing, a blank piece of paper. [00:03:00] It might be physical, it might be on a screen, but it's there. And there's nothing on it, yet. There's something both unnerving and exhilarating about that blank page in front of you.

You can be stuck one minute, and on your way to greatness mere seconds later. The page silently witnesses those moments, which can change fortunes, futures, and even lives. It's the arena for idea origination and mind maps. The canvas for doodles and sketches. The initial setting of every story ever written.

Bearing witness to expressive words turning into timeless poetry. Or the site where visual thinkers can experiment with shape and form. At least, that's the plan. The creative process can be hard. It's not meant to be easy. If it was, we wouldn't keep going back for more. We would lose interest very quickly.

Imagine getting [00:04:00] answers to your creative conundrums at the click of a button. A world where you would simply press P on your keyboard and get a poster. I for illustration. W for website, All the work done for you, M for masterpiece, H for happiness, WTF for I'll let you fill that blank. The prospect of ready made answers appears most compelling when we hit a creative roadblock.

Being stuck in a dead end hits the hardest, especially at the beginning of our journey, before we've accumulated enough experience to find answers. It's times like that when you might consider throwing in the towel, and hurling your laptop across the room for good measure, screaming, Why did no one tell me it'd be this f ing hard?

Yep, the blank piece of paper definitely witnesses some challenging times, and a fair bit of despair. But with perseverance, the creative process does start to make sense. And the aim of these pages is to offer you [00:05:00] tools to help you create that process for yourself, within the context of being a human in the 21st century.

When creativity works, it can be the best feeling in the world. When the sketch turns into a finished piece. When chords start forming a tune. When words start forming a captivating story. It genuinely can feel like the greatest choice you've ever made in your life. But unlocking that creativity rarely happens by accident.

To be able to turn a blank piece of paper into the next big idea, day in, day out, requires patience, experience and accumulative skills and knowledge. This is the boxing ring where long term careers are made or terminated. Think of all the aches and bruises that come from pushing through those tough times when idea after idea refuses to work, when you're trying to bend, punch or ram something into shape, and all to no avail.

Creativity [00:06:00] is the fuel that helps us make the invisible visible, over and over again. Options to turbocharge it are plentiful, everything from books, creative software and tutorials on how to use them, all the way to emerging new technologies. But one thing is guaranteed, physical or digital, the blank page will always be the clearest starting point.

We need the uneasy and exhilarating because we're hardwired for constant problem solving. We need some form of struggle to keep us on our toes and help us grow, even though we love to dream about easy processes and effortless creativity. The highway of life and creativity. Picture yourself driving a car along a highway.

You're following the speed of the other vehicles and sharing the same few lanes designated for travel at different momentums. The view ahead isn't expansive, not much beyond a few cars in front. [00:07:00] In free flowing traffic, that's enough. You don't need to see miles ahead. The presence of other vehicles moving forward in the same fashion as yours is reassurance enough that the way forward is clear and ultimately safe.

Everyone is moving in unison on their journeys. But accidents do happen. And they can happen in a split second, right in front of our eyes. Even worse, we can be in the crash. Worse still, it can be our fault. Shit happens. As much as we tell ourselves that all sorts of dangers can be avoided or even prevented, once we join the highway, we're in the mix with everyone else.

Exposed to outside factors that change probability ratios across different metrics and scenarios. Science. It's more likely accidents will happen, but witnessing a bad crash doesn't always encourage drivers to be on their best behavior, even if they narrowly avoid being involved themselves. Optimism [00:08:00] bias, the tendency we humans have to invent our own highly subjective reality, can often keep us believing that A, nothing truly terrible can ever happen to us, and B, we're better than other people at stuff.

We think we drive better than others. We think we care more than others. We think we're more creative than others. Such bias makes it surprisingly easy for us to convince ourselves that the odds are stacked in our favour, that we're over performing over achievers, that we're practically invincible. Sure, there may be bumps along the way, but they're only momentary blips on an otherwise steady road.

Yet it's important that we check our objective realities and fortunes and reflect on how our actions can affect other people and their realities and fortunes. No creative career happens in a vacuum. No life doesn't overlap with others. We [00:09:00] all overlap around the edges of our lives. We are connected and we need each other, but it's a truth that we often deny.

We are all on the highway of life, driving towards something we're striving for. We can be reassured by the presence of others that our actions are most likely the correct ones. What we're doing, at least, seems to resemble what others are doing around us. Or does it? Society has recalibrated the need for speed as a major metric for success, fortune and even happiness.

The faster you're moving, The more admiration and rewards are assumed to follow. Those in the inside lanes whose speedometer readings, however much lower, hold greater personal value, and whose journeys are potentially more enriching, and maybe even a little safer, can often be perceived as lacking ambition.

They aren't big, bold, or strong. They're second rate. [00:10:00] If you want to pursue other routes and encounter some unique journey, then headless ambition speed freaks may well look at you with such bewilderment that you begin questioning your decisions. They will do all they can to convince you that all the good stuff only happens where they are.

And the bigger the city, the better and faster the life. After all, size matters, right? Ultimately, at a certain level, we're all equal. Some of us are content with where we are, some of us will be searching for a long time to come. The latter often draw the most attention, because they make the loudest noise.

They rush in all directions to get somewhere. without ever knowing where that somewhere is. They're the white rabbit from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but without a party to head for. Staying on the quest and forever moving forwards offers protection from uncomfortable thoughts of slowing down, and god forbid, stopping for a [00:11:00] moment.