The Blindboy Podcast - Talking to a psychologist about Creativity

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

Prof Anna Abraham is a psychologist and neuroscientist who studies creativity and the human imagination. We chat about everything from creative Flow to the Beatles to Neurodiversity. We sat down as part of Creative Brain Week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello you lanky Daniels. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. I'm going to be keeping the introduction short because I have a very special podcast for you this week. I had a conversation with Professor Anna Abraham, who is a psychologist and neuroscientist with a specific interest in researching creativity. So we sat down and spoke all about creativity, but this isn't just a conversation about creativity. It's a conversation about creativity with an expert in creativity. And I'm doing this podcast as part of Creative Brain Week, which kicks off in Ireland this Friday.

Creative Brain Week lasts from March the 12th to the 16th. Which, it was founded by Professor Ian Robertson who asked me to do this and who set me up with the chat with Anna Abramson. So if you want to find out about Creative Brain Week

go to creativebrainweek.com But just to let you know what it is it's a series of online and in-person events which explore and celebrate how brain science and creativity collide. I believe this is their first year doing it. And it's a pioneering event that illustrates innovation

at the intersection of arts and brain science, including creative approaches to health. So that sounds phenomenally interesting and there's lots of events so check out creativebrainweek.com if you're around Dublin and you want to attend one of these events or if you want to attend them online I'm very happy to be to be doing this podcast as part of creative brain week because it's something I'd like to see. I'm hugely interested in creativity and I'm an artist but I'm also massively interested in psychology so here we have something that mixes the two. I had a fantastic conversation with Anna Abraham just for you to know what to expect.

We spoke about what creativity is, why everybody, all humans should explore our creativity to benefit our mental health we spoke at length about the Beatles documentary Get Back as a model for what the creative process is we speak about creativity and neurodiversity and we speak at length about research into what is creative flow and how do we achieve creative flow what is the science saying about how to achieve creative flow if you want to find out more about anna's work go to her website annaabraham.com to find out about her work and to find out about the book she's written about her research into creativity this april, Anna is running the 2022 Torrance Festival of Ideas, which is an annual free online cultural festival

which is open to the global community where renowned experts across diverse fields of human enterprise share their creative ideas and innovative projects with the general public. I'd like to get straight into the chat now because this was quite a long interview. We spoke for two hours. I managed to edit it down to about 90 minutes, which isn't that long as podcasts go. Like there's certain podcast interviews that can go on for four hours, but this is a 90 minute long interview, which means you mightn't listen to it in one go.

But if you're interested in creativity and psychology, this is the one for you. I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this chat and I learned so much. So here you go, my chat with Professor Anna Abraham. Anna, thank you so much for coming on the podcast for a chat. So you're Professor Anna Abraham and you are a neuroscientist

and a psychologist with a specific interest in studying creativity that's right yes and having me on this sorry you're you're welcome um that area for me is so i'm i'm an artist i'm a practicing artist across a few different disciplines, but I'm also someone who studied psychology. I was going to be a psychotherapist and this is an area I'm hugely interested in, but somewhere that I find it quite difficult to find information about creativity, creative people. about creativity creative people most of the stuff i know about is from a psychologist called donald mckinnon yeah and his studies on on creative flow and the one thing i found like even when i studied as an artist in college like not necessarily mental health but yeah mental health so here's the thing i'm professionally creative and in order for me to create art and to enter flow state regularly i know that my

self-esteem is very important my levels of happiness are quite important and i need to keep these things in check in order for me to create. Also, one thing I find with the art education system is art can sometimes be very, very serious, very serious and lacking in fun and humor. And if I'm not engaged in playfulness and fun, then I'm not going to create. And there's this big gulf I find between, we'll say psychology and art education. So I can't wait to have this chat. First question I have for you, Anna, what is creative flow?

That's a good first question. I'm very interested in what you just said because I also entered psychology in order to be a psychotherapist. I went in to study creativity by looking at it from a sort of mental illness angle um so everything you said was quite interesting what is creative flow um flow experiences in general have a number of things in common right it's a sense of um losing a sense of time and space, being extremely focused, finding something rewarding in and of itself. So the experience itself is called autotelic, so it feels extremely rewarding.

It's a very strange sense of being somehow hyper-focused, but it's still effortless. it's still effortless. And it usually occurs when there's some sort of kind of perfect balance between your abilities at that given point and the challenge that you're facing at that given point. Now, this is true of all flow experience, regardless of whether it's a creative or non-creative endeavor. And when you're doing something creative, what the state of i know

that a lot of musicians always talk about how they want to sort of reach the stage when they're jamming right yeah creating music is fun but somehow there's something about entering creating music while experiencing flow that's in some ways transports you is magical it's that sense of transportation that people want where they feel that they reaching inner parts of themselves that would be inaccessible if you were trying to go but go about it consciously and that there's something sort of revelatory and truthful about it and so we recognize these moments as being just you know very special and we want to keep going there in the case of creativity of course it's it's not it's about creating a response or generating an idea or a and by idea i mean very loosely whether it's a musical sequence or whether it's a phrase or whether it's a

any kind of expression that is novel ultimately it's about originalities it's about novelty and uniqueness unusualness to yourself, ultimately. But also with that comes a sense of finding it extremely satisfying. That you know that it's like some piece of the puzzle that you didn't know could fit. So it's a kind of very strange experience to go through. And in periods of flow, you can get there of course without being in a flow experience but there's something about um especially artists or people even scientists who talk about revelations that come to them while experiencing flow that feels um particularly

insightful you know that feels like oh my i've got so much further than i would normally have done i got there like at a warp speed suddenly. Yeah. Yeah. So there's something about it that flow in the case of creativity is very, it's always special, I think, but it is, it's, it's, it's something that I think all creative persons, I think anyone who's trying to be creative, aspires to get to that sort of experience that sort of phenomenal phenomenology of flow because um you feel very at one with yourself at that moment and so for me personally like the feeling of flow is is probably the most important thing in my life even even kind of more important than relationships with people um like it's so

beautiful and so intense that if i go for long periods without it my mental health is impacted and my mental health has a relationship with how often i can experience flow and so i i have a few different types flow. When you were speaking there about musical flow, I can achieve musical flow, but I feel that as a bodily flow. It's still flow and I'm still not on this planet. It doesn't feel like I'm on this planet. I'm still creating an ability that I couldn't do if I wasn't in flow. And it feels amazing. that I couldn't do if I wasn't in flow and it feels amazing but then there's the flow that I experience if I'm if I'm writing a short story if I'm writing a book that's what I would call

my experience of that is cognitive flow and and that's way way more intense I've I've written short stories and when I'm in full flow it literally feels like I'm sitting in a cinema watching a film that was made just for me and I'm not creating it it's being revealed to me and if I I'm not religious but if I was I would genuinely believe that this is supernatural this this is spiritual because sometimes I'll enter flow for about an hour write a story then the story is finished and I can't believe I made it I can't believe that I came up with those words on that page I can't believe that that plot arrived it feels like it already existed and I found it that's what that's what the experience of it feels like and And it's the most beautiful feeling in the world.

And I know when I create and I enter flow state, the piece of work that I've made is something that I'd be very, very happy with. And then it's frightening afterwards. Here's the thing with flow is, flow is so intense that you can be scared that you'll never get it again. And then that can can like the biggest barrier i find to to entering flow is the fear of failure if i'm afraid of failing if i'm being very egotistic in my thinking i won't enter flow and the only way that i can enter flow is

when i engage in play for the sake of play like when I was a child I used to play with lego and when I'd play with lego I wasn't trying to make anything nice I was simply doing lego for the sake of lego and if I enter a creative state with that attitude and that requires good self-esteem good mental health sufficient rest and most importantly no ego and no fear of failure like sometimes i will literally i'll try to fail if i try to fail that will help me enter flow better and by which i mean if my if i'm sitting down to create and my mind is saying that's a shit idea that's a terrible terrible idea, then I won't enter flow. So sometimes an idea will come into my head and my mind will go, that's a shit idea.

So what I do is I try and make that shit idea work. And then what I've done is I've made the failure my friend. And all of a sudden, this terrible idea has turned into something that I'm very, very happy with because I entered flow. Yeah, yeah. Gosh, there's so much that you said there that you mentioned Donald McKinnon at the start, who sort of pointed out this sort of distinction between the open mode and the closed mode, right? And essentially, well, he and many others, and I suppose in modern times, the comedian and writer, John Cleese is the one

who's brought this attention again, is that playfulness is absolutely central to, like just not taking yourself seriously is so important in to become uninhibited is necessary for all of those associations to become wackier zanier take you places that are unusual you know it's it's sort of like saying well if you go for a walk you can go down the path that was created for you and we're very you know we're sort of trained to do so aren't we like it's it's a civilized thing to do and but if you're being playful like kids are they run into

the woods and honestly they just they do what they want they just follow where their curiosity is they see something they hear something and they just go and it leads you down you will discover more about the forest you are trying to walk through and experience if you go off the track right so um you'll notice more things but also you must have a feeling of safety yes yes that's true right so um and so it's the thing about flow that's kind of for one thing you have to feel safe in your in yourself for one thing in terms of where your mind will lead you you have to sort of feel convinced about your process you know that i will i don't know shut myself off from the world for an hour or two um and do what you said about letting go of your ego but that's probably the most critical thing because and especially and

i wonder really if it's worse now when we're in an age where everyone's sort of showing and telling everything right this this sort of emphasis is there and it's very hard to say well do it for its own sake you know so when this is the hardest thing to even when people come to you know people like myself to say well how do you become more creative and part of it is just saying well you have to do things that are not necessarily useful you have to learn to not we've just sort of brought up to think of our time as a resource that is precious that you don't waste that everything is in measurable quantifiable terms know, and it's very hard to break

away from that and said, just sit down and try to get bored. Don't look at your phone. Do something aimless, push yourself to a point where you're actually, you know, you go past being this insecurity of saying, Oh, my God, am i being absolutely useless here to really saying screw that i yes i'm enjoying this and i'm allowing my it's almost like saying well you you fit yourself in a bottle and you start to sort of push against it and you think oh my gosh this is getting really tight here i i should go back to my tiny size again but then you break away from the bottle and suddenly think oh this is all of my own making um there's real power and understanding the constraints constraints are important it gives you safety tells to be able to bend the rules is an important thing to get to new spaces

um but we also have to recognize the constraints we put on ourselves right that we think well i can't create time for something or i only have one minute here or I need to do things that earn me money or whatever it is. And all of those things are sort of a damper on well-being. There's this great paper I came across recently by Amy Isham and I think Tim Jackson. And they focused on essentially the talk about materialism essentially puts a real damper on our ability to experience flow and how we can claim flow back it's important to have flow in order to have well-being it's important to flow it's not just doesn't it's not as simple as making you feel better it gives you a sense of the power that lies within you right there's very there's very few other instances

where you can really feel how strong you are or how capable you are right in your daily life it's just sort of things that are surprising to you and daydreaming when we were kids like when we were kids we used to do a hell of a lot more daydreaming than we do as an adult and that daydreaming was very important to just feeling good yes and i think there's it's impossible to daydreaming than we do as an adult and that daydreaming was very important to just feeling good yes and i think there's it's impossible to daydream now if you think about it like so when could you take out your phone you're taking out your phone so i think i think we i speak to like my colleagues about this you know as someone who teaches a university and very often what we're trying to do in a classroom is very different from when I was a student in a classroom where there were no phones around right because ultimately if a lecturer was boring you would

either decide to you know you had to either focus and do something like doodling or you'd focus and take notes if that didn't work you'd start to doodle or if me I would generally just go into this fantasy realm right in my head stare at the person and just zone out. And that's flow. That's, yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's just nice. It just, you're just off in an imaginative space, really.

Whereas now, I think the first thing is to look at your, you know, it's, it's, it's, what happens is that all our distractions now push us to being very present, focused. And it doesn't really sort of allow you to know how to deal with boredom because part of knowing how to deal with boredom and if you're left with your own thoughts is that you think about um things that are in your own mind and not somebody else's mind right so if you're going on the on your phone and you're looking at oh what's somebody saying on twitter or whatever it might be you know that you're looking at typically what other people are saying and doing and thinking um it's a very it's a very different time now right so and it's like the the closed like we were speaking there about donald

mckinnon said that we have our closed mode of thinking and the open mode of thinking and the closed mode of thinking is what we use to socialize, to buy our food, to just integrate with other people. And social media is very much a closed way of thinking because you're consistently reacting against other people's opinions and then evaluating yourself. So if you look at social media, you can see, you know, someone else has something that I don't have. And then I go, I wonder, should I have that thing or I'll see someone who's doing better than I'm doing and I wonder should I be doing as good as they are and all of these thoughts are so far removed from where I need to be to be creative and to be creative I need to be open and to be open means the ego isn't present and I'm playing for the sake of play. There's very little

playfulness on social media. That's true. There's no, I see very little play there. But also I think the importance of coming to your own sort of impressions, right? I mean, it's very hard when you have social media because let's think about, I don't know, 20, 30, 40 years ago when you watch something like the news, right? It would be perhaps once or twice a day. You might listen on the radio or watch television, depending on that. And you just read what was being served to you. And you had time to cultivate your own opinion. You might hear perhaps what your parents thought of it,

if you were kind of in a vocal family. But even then, not necessarily, but you were sort of mulling over what you had just heard or read or saw, devoid of anybody else's sort of speaking voice. And so by the time, I think those sorts of things, the fact that it kind of strengthens your own mental, your muscles in a sense to think for yourself and to form your own opinions or to question. Whereas I think the problem a lot with social media is I think it's great to have a lot of the opinion.

For one thing, you get you have a wider access to the world and all the world views there. But also you don't have very much time for reflection because your own reflection, your own personal individual way of looking at things. Because within seconds you look at the comments. You look at the comments within seconds. Absolutely. And it could be from people you despise and people you love. Very often our feeds or whatever you might be using there are very tailored to people. Most people are not trying to be heterogeneous in their sampling of the world around them. They tend to be very homogenous.

They tend to be friends with people, you know, try to follow people they like, listen to opinions that they agree with and so on. And so it becomes it's a kind of has a bit of a devastating effect, I think, on your ability to imagine and your ability to think even logically in many ways but not just imaginatively and playfully or creatively but also in a critical logical way which is the other side the closed mode side which is also essential to the creative process and that is also equally being compromised i don't think that gets as much notice because the obvious impact on playfulness and creativity is plain to see. The other side is that we're not, we're not cognitively pushing ourselves

in ways that we had to perhaps early on because there was less information, you had to seek out stuff more. You certainly didn't have a hundred opinions thrown at you or what you've you know and so i think you we had to evolve the it does have an impact on the way thinking evolves in general it's interesting what you said there where you said that so we've lost the capacity to so let's just say it's the 90s you see a news story you don't have to listen to many opinions you have time to

think about that news story or whatever all day long in the open mode of thinking via daydreaming or boredom and then you can enter the closed mode of thinking and engage criticality and form opinions and that's that's really important uh the closed mode of thinking it has its place like what i refer to it as is if i'm writing a short story i write with fire in my veins and i edit with ice in my veins so the process of creativity is crazy there's no rules i'm there to have fun i'm not judgmental all i want is 2000 words but then tomorrow once i have those 2000 words then I don't want to use my open mode of thinking I want to go back to those words with a critical closed way of thinking and in my closed way of thinking that's where I bring in things that I've learned from the past

I bring in skill I bring in criticality I'm a a bit hard around myself. But these things are only helpful the day after. Yeah. I mean, the closed mode really deserves a lot of praise. I think it's because it's less magical in some ways that it gets a short shrift. But editing is so, it's the refining of an idea can make all the difference. And for, you know, it's part of the satisfying moment of it's not just satisfying to you but it's going to be satisfying to the larger collective and that really enters in only at the point of the closed mode and this this revision aspect of it all that

you realize oh this is a good idea but i need to go back to the drawing board because I think I can do better. And or the finessing of it is, you know, like we just, you know, we it's sort of so important to the process of the aesthetic experience of anything that we do, right? Whether it's creating music or writing or coming up with a theory. So I think the closed mode deserves a lot of due there for sure. Because it's when you polish the rough diamond that you found the day before. And it's really about looking at it from how is someone else going to look at this? You know, how do I reach out to my audience? It's not enough that I'm having a frolicking great time, you know, having these ideas. Also, I kind of want other people to enjoy it and that might need mean tweaking it in specific ways um and so that's why the editing process is so

so creative in and of itself it's creative but if if i think of an audience while i'm trying to enter flow i'm fucked yeah no that's it and immediately the uh like it that's when I begin to self-flagellate and that's when I like a big fear that a lot of creative people have is you enter flow once and then you feel it's never going to happen again and then when you try and do it again you go that's it I'm actually not creative it was just a fluke and then you beat yourself up and i'm gonna ask you about block creative block later but one thing i want to pick up on so when you were speaking there about um how the modern social media environment has uh put barriers up for us to engage in um kind of a reflective a solitary reflectiveness you're not just speaking there about artists or creative

people. You're speaking about the benefit of daydreaming or flow for all human beings. Absolutely. Can you tell me about that? I think the creativity essentially is not the domain of only a few privileged or talented people. Some people are very lucky to be born with, you know, clear interests and clear talents and all. That might be in the artistic sort of spectrum of things you could do. And then they have the right kind of guidance. So it's easily recognized. And those, I would say, are very fortunate people.

But creativity is, for me, it's more like a mindset that we have to think about as well you know i'm trying to in my more recent work now i was trying to think about creativity as more like a more like creative health you know just like you know we sort of devote ourselves so if you think about this a little bit in terms of physical health like we take this for granted now but before the 80s there was no huge pressure on everybody to get fit. And like it really took, I don't know, Jane Fonda and the aerobics movement. And again, I don't know enough about

these kind of Western cultural trends, but I'm assuming that she was the one to sort of popularize it. And those, you know, the coming of TV, the showing of people in action combined with fitness experts. And bodybuilding was weird. In the 1970s, there was this film called Pumping Iron, and it's the first film that Arnold Schwarzenegger was ever

in. And yeah, and he was just as a young Austrian bodybuilder. But this film about bodybuilders in 1973 in California was presented as a novelty. It's like, wow, isn't it so strange that there's these people in California and they're trying to grow muscles? How odd. And now this is just popular culture. It's just, yeah, God, every place has like a little protein shake shop and stuff, right? Like, I mean, essentially, yeah, but it's kind of mind-boggling how quickly all of that took over.

It took a visual medium first that was accessible and there and people's households most people could afford it some level of it um it took uh you know the sports sports to be broadcasted in very specific ways and not sports as in competitive expert sports but things that you could do at home things that you could do with a little bit of help um suddenly you know it wasn't just glamorous actresses and models who could be good you know have a certain type of fitness it was sort of reachable for everybody and now if you fast forward to now i think you'd be hard-pressed to find people who weren't at least aware of what fit what means to be physically yeah fit didn't have certain aspirations there

even if they may not always follow it and know things about nutrition how you know what kind of activity burns um calories and what doesn't and so on and this is a very very very fast evolution so this concept of physical fitness is a pretty novel one um in terms of being accessible and i think create in terms of if you want creative fitness we're nowhere near there right because still creativity is seen um in relation to the highest magnitude right so it's and it's also not like so creativity is valued amongst a small section of society but if you're not an artist it's seen as time wasting. And like I always think we're all born creative. Every single child plays with crayons. Every single child plays with Lego and engages in play and creativity.

And then you get to about three or four years of age. You go to school and then someone puts you into the category of talented or not talented. And then some people just stop. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly it. talented and then some people just stop yeah i mean that's exactly it so in creativity research sort of we would distinguish between what we call magnitudes of creativity right so there's this very famous model called the 4c model and you'd say well on the on the lowest end of magnitude is what we call mini c creativity and this is what children exhibit every single day. And they do it through sometimes the arts, like you said, but taking crayons or Lego and so on.

But they actually do it through their exploration of spaces. They're making sense of the environment. If you're around little children, it's kind of crazy the way they, the kind of things they say, the kind of sense they're making of their world, right? Or the questions they ask you really show you that it's a kind of curiosity. And they would say the really zany things because um that's what so

i so i can give an example of my son he when he was very young and he was he's autistic so he's less communicative than most kids but he uh so he saw that as we're putting on some eyeliner and then he said what and i said eye makeup is what he would call it. He said, what about nose makeup? I thought, my gosh, if you figure out how that works, we could be gazillionaires in no time. But I was like, that's so

bizarre. I've never thought how could you decorate your nose, essentially. But why not? But why not? Believe me, I did try to like i let him go go to town and it looked ridiculous but um he had a lot of fun uh and i did too but essentially it was sort of like that's such such a child thing to say you know and they say it all i mean kids do it all the time they're making sense of the environment and they say the most

creative things and imaginative things possible. And so that's kind of like the lowest magnitude in that it's very subjective. It's very, you know, it's, and that's so powerful in and of itself. Next level would be something what they call little C creativity. And this is perhaps slightly more objective. So I know, for instance, I do some writing on my own time for myself. And I know, for instance, I do some writing on my own time for myself. And I know, for instance, that the poem I wrote yesterday is probably better than the poem I wrote, I don't know, two years ago, right? And so this is when you have some level of, so it's a little bit, it's quite different from what a little baby or a little child does. So there's a little bit of

objectivity there. And that's also valuable and powerful to me, because it gives me... So there's a little bit of objectivity there. And that's also valuable and powerful to me because it gives me... So there's criticality there. There's some criticality there. At least, I wouldn't say criticality as much as an evolution that you're aware of, of your own abilities, right? So I know, for instance, now I'm a much better cook today than I was when I was 20. And that's because I just have more experience. I'm more experimental and trying things, you know. So it's an awareness, an awareness of here's a thing that I've been rewarded in the past. I think I'm good at this. I would like to get better.

Yeah. And also I like to surprise people. I like to like surprise myself even. And that I know how sort of different ingredients can be put together to develop a sort of interesting taste. And so it's more like an evolution of your own skills that may or may not be associated with external recognition. So in schools, they have competitions, especially arts-based competitions or science-based competitions that try and reward this a little bit. But it doesn't have to be something that is associated with external sort of incentives. And the third level would be the proce I think it's called professional creativity this is essentially the level to which a lot of people who have recognized you know have recognized that they have talent or other people have recognized for them and decide to pursue it as more than just a hobby at some level or degree of professionalism so these might be the kids who end up going to art school, for instance.

Right. And the final level is what's called big C creativity. And these are people who reach, let's say, the pinnacle of creative achievement in that their ideas change the world. And not every artist's ideas change the world. Right. No, not every idea out there will persuade you to change your taste in music or or um writing practices and so on so it's important to think that if when people at the moment what i

would say is when people most people when they think of creativity are thinking of just the highest or the highest two levels of magnitude mainly which is professional or big c if you want levels of creativity um but it all starts you can't get there without starting from you know the rudimentary levels of um creative thinking and sort of creative discovery that starts with the little mini c with the children all the way up so when i think about creative health it's almost like when I think, well, none of, see, for me, I will try to maintain my fitness a little bit, doing a little bit of running. I like to run, for instance. I know that I'm not going to be a pro, you know, or even I'm not going to be an Usain Bolt or a Cerebro Williams, right? But that doesn't mean I don't invest in my physical fitness.

Because I have a body. I have the capacity to move and my physical fitness is not just about getting good and being the fastest of the best it's about maintaining um you know my physical health it's about all of the other benefits and it feels like it feels amazing like I run too and the reason that i run i i'm not i literally own i run because it feels incredible and this is a wonderful thing that i do every day and when i run a lot this is one of the things that helps me to be creative that puts me in a position to do it and that's a wonderful um argument you're putting forward there where lots of people run and lots of people run with zero expectation

of becoming professional runners absolutely so why don't we all engage in one of those seas of creativity now the other question i'd have for you is like what is the the benefit to the the human being who would engage in some degree of creativity in their daily life? There's so many. First is having a sense of, sorry, developing a sense of mastery in something, right? So let's take, it can be anything. It can be something that's avowedly creative, like, you know, learning how to paint or something um learning how to it's trying your hand at writing poems or um cooking any anything you want it to be really that it's just important that it's a little bit open-ended so there's room for discovery and room for growth and i think so one is of course just learning about yourself and your own skills. That's enormously powerful for people to have some ownership.

You know, there's very few of us who have complete ownership of everything you do in your life in some ways. I mean, how many of us really do that? But most of us work for some establishment. You know, we do have to cater to specific rules and roles that that particular job requires and so on. But the advantage of creative pursuits is that you're kind of your own, I don't want to say your own boss, but essentially, it's all about what, you know, I want to do in the moment, what I enjoy doing in the moment. And it's really a process of self-discovery, in a sense. Personal meaning.

It's personal meaning it's personal but i always find this is meaning i mean a sense of having meaning and purpose because quite a lot of people don't get meaning and purpose from their work they don't a lot of people work jobs and these jobs are so that they can live and survive yeah and i always encourage people to try and find anything creative to do as a way to find personal meaning. Here's the thing I love doing. Yes. There's no results from it. Exactly.

I don't make money from it. Exactly. But I'm making space to discover who I am and what I like. Yeah. And this then, I find it has a very beneficial impact on our sense of self-worth. Absolutely. Because if you have a sense of meaning, then you understand what you know, what you like, you know what your boundaries are, you know who you are.

You understand yourself better. And it's interesting that you're sort of casting a lens on yourself in a sort of really reflective, generous, warm, open-minded capacity in a way that nobody else can do it for you. You see yourself progressing. Maybe progressing is not the way, but the evolution of your skills, the way that you experience flow kind of effortlessly while you do it. There is no one who enters into those spaces of just trying out

something and that comes out of it and says oh this was awful you know it's it never happens because if you're not doing it in order to earn money or if you're not doing it with sort of a productive goal at the end you know you're just messing about and you're having fun and that's and that's enormously that is enormously rewarding to know that you granted yourself that generosity and that it produced something that at least makes you smile you know gave you a sense I didn't know I had this in me because some like you mentioned when you write you'd sometimes think I didn't know I had that I mean Like it just came out the way it did. And that is a process of like self-revelation there is enormously powerful. It makes you feel a strong sense of autonomy.

It makes you feel more in control, not control in a bad way, but just sort of like less, you know, moving around with the winds of change as much. Like, you know, this is me. This is where I'm solidly anchored. I can do this. Is it an enormously powerful thing to have?

We're going to take a slight break from the conversation with Anna Abraham now so that we can have a pause. This week, we're going to have, I have a little jaw harp, which is an instrument that you put into your mouth and you play. So let's have a jaw harp pause.

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the peak feeling if i could put it into words is i feel like my existence has purpose. It's like, ah, I know why I'm alive. Everything about being alive makes sense right now. And it's to do this. And it's the most wonderful feeling. It's almost spiritual. I know why I'm alive. It's to do this. Yeah, it's called peak experiences

for that particular reason, right? It's almost like a sense of, I mean, if you look at the kind of experiences that lead to flow very often i mean the highest thing that you can do is the arts and crafts some people experience it obviously when they're they're engaged in praying and meditation and things like that sort of in you can also experience it when you're having a wonderful conversation with someone who you really gel with and are having and stimulating and it's just taking you places and you know and i'm sure you've had those and your listeners have as well where you just think where's the time passed this has been incredible i feel rejuvenated i feel like um I have learned so much here.

And there's the peak experience side of it. I mean, it's a subject of study for so long in psychology. And it's just so, so magical that it can happen in so many different situations. important to engage in creative pursuits particularly nowadays as well is that it really pushes you away from looking outward into the world that is grabbing our attention all the time has ways of making us I don't know anyone who looks at social media and is saying this is wonderful only you know yeah you're hoping you find something funny but like you have to go through a lot of pain to find that one little funny thing and you wonder is it was it worth it was it worth it and you feel a bit badgered by the end of it thinking i cannot believe i spent all this time yeah try and find that and then but and

somehow just allowing your mind to heal from that experience alone by engaging in different types of activities that ain't you know allow you to engage flow. And very often the arts and crafts are the fastest, easiest access point in order to do it. But you can do it through sports as well. You can do it through things like just appreciating nature. Some people get it when they're just riding a bike. It's just like clearing your mind of all of the clutter. Yeah, running. Running.

If you get what would be referred to as the runner's clutter. Yeah, running. Running. If you get what would be referred to as the runner's high. Oh, gosh, yeah. I mean, that is, you're not present, but you're very present all at one. And it's just fantastic and beautiful. And the runner's high is, it's similar to creative flow. You mentioned meditation there. Is meditation a form of flow it can be depending it can lead you to flow states for sure depending on what kind of medication medication

i was gonna say meditation you do um it's certainly um one of the one of the many activities one can do in order to reach a flow state but so uh are, you know, so is things like reading, reading fiction very often, you know, it's, it's, you know what it's... Getting lost in someone else's work is flow. When you are absorbed in it, you know, that's something else. But the highest level... Listening to music.

Listening, yeah. But the, the, it's interesting though, the more passive your experience of... So you can get flow experiences through very passive sort of things you can do so for instance this might be sometimes for instance people it playing maybe playing video games or watching like binge watching movies or you know programs now this mimics in many ways the flow experience and that it's very stimulating yeah that's the core word there

that mimics it only mimics yeah i play video games i will binge watch it feels like flow but i don't get all that lovely beneficial i don't feel rejuvenated afterwards i feel kind of drained even though i did exit the room mentally and exist in something like flow state yeah i think this is what is the other side so the flow experience is something we experience you know this one of those magical things we can experience as as human beings but like all good things when something mimics many aspects of the flow state then you're much more unlikely to engage in something that pushes you into an actual flow state because that requires effort, right?

Yeah. What about drugs? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The same thing. Drugs will give some people, and some people will, I don't know, smoke a joint and then try to create something, and they'll think it's amazing while they're high,

and then afterwards they'll just go, what the fuck was that? Absolutely, yeah. It's very common. Yeah, yeah. Because, I mean, there's some really elaborate studies in the 60s when, you know, there was still psychedelics were permitted. Yeah. Not as, you know, they were used for a lot of,

there was some really excellent studies of it. And they looked at artists who were before the influence while taking it and after. And you can see they were doing sort of their usual work. And there's no question that it deteriorates during the experience. There's literally, and I think it was aldous huxley who's of course experimented greatly and was very conscious about the benefits of certain aspects of taking psychedelics um really pointed this out really well and that he said you know we have to distinguish between what is going on during the

experience and how it affects you after because during the experience you're not particularly interested in doing anything productive or useful you know and that it's so what you can't actually expect much of sort of creative worth to come out of that that physically you would produce something while you're in that state. The advantages, if any, to glean from it, from those who have good experiences when consuming such substances, is that for many people,

it sort of changes the way they look at the world, or they have had a sort of revelation in those moments that essentially affect the way they look at the word from afterwards. So they've had something meaningful has clicked and changed. So it's more about what they leave with the experience rather than what they had during it, right? Because I think about that a lot, Anna.

And so I would think of something like the music of the Beatles in the 60s when the Beatles went psychedelic. So, yes, OK, John Lennon and Paul McCartney took acid. But, OK, they took acid and they saw some stuff and had some revelations on acid. But then the creativity didn't happen while they were on the acid. It happened afterwards so these are people who are already creative responding to something that happened so if you

got john lennon and put him on a bus something creative is going to happen about that bus trip as much as an lsd trip yes that's absolutely true this is's just, you know, was it Rilke? It's this great quote where he says, you know, you shouldn't complain. And your capacity to be a poet has to do with the way you look at the world. So if you can't be a poet in your surrounding, it means that you don't, you know, you're unable to capture how gorgeous the world is. It's your powers that have failed you. It's not the world that has failed you, right? And I think it's absolutely true that anyone who is, so yes, I think Glennon would have got, it wouldn't have mattered because if you're sort of looking at the way he looked at the world

and the kind of music they produced, you can see that it's about a curiosity, right? A playfulness, a curiosity and openness did you watch the documentary oh yes i did like that is the most beautiful documentary about the creative process yes because we we we think these songs are all these very important serious songs that change the world and then you see how they're being created and all it is is it's friendship it's friends it's humility on humility i was so struck by that you know like these are the they were rock stars like of the highest order at the point when that was being made and i just didn't see ego i didn't see it they were just trying to

make things work and they had an openness and generosity to each other. And of course, there were little tensions. They were sort of respectful with those tensions. We were led to believe that they were fighting. They all loved each other. They all really loved and respected each other. And even though they loved and respected each other, yes, they had their little bickering stuff.

And I know they didn't respect George Harrison because he was younger than them and they couldn't stop seeing him as a 13 year old. But there was love present throughout all of it. Just the way they looked at each other. I was thinking, I'm not sure if anything in the modern era would compare to this because it was so sort of striking to see that in action. And what you could see about the creative process there is that it's a collective effort. You're listening to each other. You're trying to, you're searching

for ways in which the magic can happen. And it's very, it's both purposeful and completely unplanned at the same time, right? It's sort of, it's, that was so magical about that process and that it was sort of, it took you both spaces so magical about that process and that it was sort of, it took you both spaces and you told you that they were, they were really capable of holding out till the end till they absolutely had to. Yeah. You know, that's a really important marker for creativity at the highest level that you

don't try to do things very quickly as fast as possible to meet some deadlines, but you hold out till you, you're sure that this is the, this is the best you could do in that situation. And you know what Paul McCartney said recently about that exact thing you're, you're sure that this is the best you could do in that situation. And you know what Paul McCartney said recently about that exact thing you're mentioning? So Paul McCartney was complaining about having an iPhone. So Paul McCartney was saying like recently, I have an iPhone now. So if an idea for a song comes into my head, I just shout it into my iPhone

and I forget about it and I never return. But in the olden days, me and John Lennon, if we had an idea for a song, we literally had to do it there and then. And he said even before that, the most important part of their creativity, when Lennon and McCartney weren't even famous, so they had no access to recording equipment. no access to recording equipment. They, the only song, if they wrote a song together in their bedroom and they might write six a day, only the one that was the catchiest was the one that they would remember,

which I thought was beautiful. That's amazing. Because they had no way to record it. That's, yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's very cool. Isn't that just incredible? It is just incredible.

And it's just, I just love how they sort of fed off each other's the best you know what they were able to produce together and they were i think they were able to sort of bring out the best in each other right that was just sort of that kind of tells you how the constraints and the of the time like you're saying of the situation that they had and how they sort of intelligently dealt with it to bring out, you know, to use their own minds to sort of think, OK, let's go with this particular tactic. I wonder if either of them were alone, if they would think to do that, if you see what I mean. No, because the solo work, like you listen to their individual solo work. And yes, some of the songs are quite good, but they're in their solo work.

It's not as strong as the Beatles. And one thing, too, that you see with their relationship, which I feel is very important to collaborative creativity. They had unwritten rules of delegation. So when it came to words, it was quite clear that John Lennon was the man for the words. And everybody respected that. And they would use the phrase good words which I thought was beautiful they didn't say poetic lyrics

it was simply John Lennon saying just keep saying words just keep saying whatever word that comes into your head and then we'll figure out the good words later and then when it came to the music the symmetrical vibrations of air

that was Paul McCartney's territory and then George Harrison tried to fit in between that double relationship and there was tension and then Ringo was just like I'm a drummer I'm gonna do I'm gonna be the backing beat and I don't interfere with what you guys have going on because I don't have it and it worked beautifully yeah because you need the tension you need the stability that Ringo was providing as well actually yeah um and you need that sort of camaraderie there the the trusted duo to come up with whatever they can

but the the the tension that i think lennon at least in the in i mean i haven't read that much about them but suddenly from the documentary it was very clear that he was very curious about everything that george had to say and was suggesting so that is a real openness to change so imagine you're you're doing something amazing and then someone else comes along saying what about this it does take you to be pretty egoless to allow somebody else to come in as they did for um the oh who came to play the piano and that that really lifted them up right um billy preston billy preston exactly and it was a wonderful addition to the relationship and you could see all their friendships changed as soon as billy preston came in it was it was just different it was like they spiced up the relationship they did it was so chuffed all four of them like just

you know just so so eager and gleeful about him there um and and he was so happy to be part of it yeah in in your field Anna because like we're speaking about this film here and surely within your field working professionally in studying creativity that film surely is something that that people are speaking about within your field because to me it's like that's a documentary about the creative process, unadulterated. It certainly is. And I would have to speak to, I haven't actually spoken to anyone in the field about it. I wonder if, you know, usually things take time to filter through a little bit. And I imagine that it's the sort of thing that creative researchers from the music side of the research side would be people that would be looking at that much more closely.

But it's an incredible resource because, you know, there's just it's very rare to find. I mean, I mean, we are living in an age where you get first person narratives from so many artists that that is unprecedented right so you can it's it's I think there must be 20 McCartney interviews out there at different times you know over the past 10 years for instance and now following this one he but very often it has a lot to do with who's interviewing perhaps and what they're trying to get at. And if someone is trying to find out about their process or if it's about more a sort of fanboy perspective, maybe. But I'll tell you specifically.

Sorry for interrupting. Go on. So specifically about that film and what you're speaking about there. So first of all, people didn't have the awareness of cameras that we have now. Right now, second of all, and this is what's this is why this film took so long to make. A huge amount of the conversations that we hear in that film were actually artificially generated using software. So when the Beatles were speaking privately, often they would try to play their guitars quite loudly over the speech.

So they put a lot of effort into not being heard or seen by the cameras all the time. So they tried to obfuscate and hide it. But Peter Jackson, the director, got like cutting edge technology. He's a wizard, yes. Yeah, to cut out that guitar sound or to do this and to enhance

stuff they didn't want us hearing they didn't they never expected that all of those conversations would end up on film they just thought it would be the cutting room floor it was like it's it's a film for the podcast generation we're okay with listening to something now

that's three hours long. We're okay with that or hearing an unedited conversation. In the 60s, that was crazy. That didn't happen. That's true. Talk about forward thinking for the time. But yeah, you never see the creative process play out in the moment. You never, I mean, there's almost nothing like that that's sort of unadulterated.

The interesting thing about it, though, and I think I was listening to i forget where to whom peter jackson was speaking with some podcast and he apparently spoke about how he presented it to mccartney to say you know i've done this thing and yeah and mccartney was a bit nervous and he said no you know what i just want to reassure you that none of you come out of this looking awful if anything it's really surprised and so he he pointed out how in that even the members who were there remembered it as being more negative than it was yeah so it just the the insidiousness of that at some level right that you think and of course directly after that there were you know breakups things just really happened but it went downhill from there and so their memory so i love that the you know when in psychology i mean i think it was daniel carno and who talked about

the distinction between the mem your experience of something and your memory of it right and that i think he i don't know where he came up with this we said you know your your sense of the present is only nine seconds long essentially you're any you're the the the experienced present right so yeah when you think about especially in the context of creativity don't think about engaging in it thinking how am i going to remember this because that is not a proper depiction of what really happens in that moment right like even if you think about what you did yesterday what did you know you might have had a hard day yesterday and you think kind of kind of you're not thinking about the whole two hours that you struggled you just have little moments there

so it's just part of it is thinking your experience of something is quite different from your memory of it because memory is not linear it's sort of woven in some way right it's not it's the way you recall things is quite different and so i thought the the the that was what was really powerful about that documentary in many ways and that and it was beautiful for to be able to show to the remaining members at least that you know you you're one of the few people who have the maybe not all how many hours of the experience but in condensed form still very long you know what the experience of that creating that was and how distinct it is from your memory of it and now you can it's a sort of healing process i think to know that oh you know what we were we were that was that was a good experience that was amazing

we were wonderful to each other we were um i can't i can't and so i think that's kind of it gave me i have some ideas that i'm sort of mulling over about how what that can tell us about why we can need to promote sort of creative fitness creative health let's say is that part of doing that is just like with physical fitness about in the moment what you experience is glorious and we shouldn't think about it in terms of what happens after that. You know, we put so much premium on what does this, what do I, what is the outcome I get out of things in a very concrete way? And part of it is to really understand the experience of something that is the outcome like that. What you're experiencing in the here and now, that's going to be good.

And that's going to be. And when you think about it in the aftermath, might think oh that half an hour i should have been doing x and that's a sort of and that's that's sort of thing that gets people to not do it right because they're like i wasted my time there i should have done this instead i should have you know and to think no actually you're then discounting what actually happened in that half hour that you that you used to um engage in that specific creative mode um so that's something to be perhaps a little more mindful of is perhaps the word you know in in and that for me as well personally um so if i write a book it takes me

about a year and it's a wonderful experience and when the book ends and when it gets to publishing that's really sad i don't like that part yeah it reminds me a bit of death it just it it feels that but one thing that i've found is in order to help my uh to engage and flow more is i need to create because the experience of creating is the reward, not the end piece. The actual joy of doing it. And if I'm doing that and I'm in flow, the end piece kind of looks after itself. The end piece will be good if I'm there. But and it's the same with exercise.

Like I exercise because I enjoy exercising, not because I'm trying to grow more muscles or lose weight that stuff will happen anyway but process-based creativity has been something that's really beneficial to me this process is hugely enjoyable and if i do this i'm happy for the rest of the week and i have high self-esteem yeah and that's really the way i think that's a good analogy to the book um writing of the book and finishing it and there's this there is a real slump point that comes when yeah um and it somehow feels very divorced the writing process and the publishing process yeah and it is i think when i wrote the first thing the first mate and it's also true if you write research articles sometimes you know by the time it gets accepted and stuff you're so beyond once you see it it's the true if you write research articles sometimes, you know, by the time it gets accepted and stuff, you're so beyond. Once you see it, it's the process has been sort of struggle. But I do remember when I wrote the book that I did, Neuroscience of Creativity, it was it was quite painful to write it.

It was also very joyful to write it. But I absolutely was unprepared for how divorced the actual coming out of the book would be. And I thought and I thought in my head, why doesn't this feel more momentous? And that's because we are so outcome focused. We expect to feel like perhaps as we did when we were kids, if you won a race or something, you got a little prize. And the outcome was very close in physical time and space to the doing of the thing and a lot of

good things in life that require you know just attention in a specific way um dedication over a long period of time especially the written work now written work is really unusual because it takes i've always sort of in the recent work, I sort of talked about different types of creativities and I talked about how creative writing is an essentially a fragile process because every aspect of it is in isolation, right? You have the ideas in isolation, you're writing it by yourself. All of that publishing stuff

happens completely divorced from you. When it comes out, people are reading it and they have to read it by themselves. So at every single, and it takes time at every single step it is an exercise in isolation in some ways right and requires a lot of time and effort from everybody it's very different if it's music because you create something and you kind of go out and play it in front of a crowd for instance or even just to relive that yeah exactly and they see they feel it because the attention required for anything visual or musical is instantaneous right so you can if you want someone's attention you just click

your fingers you got it whereas if you're trying to get them to read a book even if you throw the book on their heads they're not going to read it, right? They have to actually engage in a different process. So there are real differences in the process of, in the creative process, depending on what domain you're looking at. And so I would think that if people want to get into doing more creative activities, they probably want to pay a little attention to that as well, that some things come. So the process of discovery is faster i think if you're if you're on one hand

for instance writing we've all been trained to write and be you know we don't read so you have an upper hand there right you can already start so you could start with a little i don't know limericks if you want um but or little haikus it doesn't have journaling i always say to people to journal oh yeah just speak about write about your day and if you want to throw that in the bin afterwards that's okay but just write about your day for you and you only and you're not looking for an end result you're writing about your day for the joy of doing it yeah yeah for sure that's exactly i mean that's completely something that would be simple to do in terms of, yes, you're recounting something. If you want to try and create something new, you can also do it a smaller level.

Right. Start with something small, a format that is small. It could be a little sketch. It could be anything. A coloring book. Okay. Yes. I mean, a lot of people use that for rehab as well. People who are scared, people who are frightened. A lot of people are terrified because they think, I'm not creative because a teacher told them years ago, and the first thing they feel safe to do is to use a coloring

book because they know, I can't go outside the lines because the lines are already there. Yeah. And it's an okay first step, I think, for someone who's frightened. I think it's important to, you know, I think that there's a grill, again, the process of discovery of materials that you can use like visual arts are really great that way because whether it's coloring it's just the if you're trying to color with different types of

materials right whether it's chalk or whether it's a crayon or whether it's a pencil it has a different effect and there's something about doing it that is a process a mini process of discovery but perhaps but the feel of the of the of the the drawing implement against the material that you're using is kind of fascinating because it's not something you kind of and you can see that with kids you know when you give them something that they're not used to um something like oh this this feels different this is interesting this is coming off of my fingers that is is, there's, I think people just need to sort of realize that the joy of discovery, discovering something that was unexpected, right?

That there is something, and this is why something like gossip or something might be interesting for us. Again, this is mimicking the process of discovery. mimicking the process of discovery. But ultimately it's because we're primed to enjoy discovering, to novelty, to discovering something new, to making new connections. And it can be exploited for,

our attentional systems can be exploited in ways that are counter to our own interests by, you know, as you see sometimes with social media and so on. But ultimately it's there, it's, you know, it's there sometimes with social media and so on but ultimately it's there it's you know it's there for a really good purpose which is noticing notice and then the thing about drawing is that you start to notice things when you start to notice um we do these sometimes when they do these workshops we do drawing exercises where we tell people to draw the same thing but then first we give them like 30 seconds and then we give them i don't know two minutes and then give them five minutes and every time they do the drawing of course and every time they just look at the object differently they're noticing more details they notice angles

and and little shadows and there's and when people are talking like they're just so much joy in just seeing things in you um and so these are sort of things that are in anybody's grasp, you know. And what you mentioned there as well, Anna, is actually quite helpful. So if you say to somebody, you know, you set up a still life, you know, a vase and some fruit, and you say, draw that, that can be very frightening to people. But if you say to them them draw that in 60 seconds people are more willing to do it because yeah yeah it's playful to start with it's playful it's fun there's

restrictions and the thing is too you know if someone says to you draw that in 60 seconds you know the end result is going to be shit anyway and when that is the case the fear of failure isn't there and it's one of the first exercises when i studied art college when i went to art college we would have a still life model in the class and that's very intimidating draw this human and everybody else is drawing the other human and you're going to compare how good each of your drawings are yeah but the first class was we have, this person is going to change poses every five minutes. And you have to try your best

to describe what you see every five minutes. And once that happens, you stop worrying about what's good or bad very quickly because the parameters have changed and then you're entering flow easier. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't matter. It's more, in some ways,

you become more practical about it and so that removes all inhibitions and it just becomes like oh this is a game and games are great like it's it's a little it's it's not about right or wrong it's not about skill really somehow it's more about fun it's about fun right and curiosity or write a poem in 60 seconds yes like you're saying you know you enjoy writing poetry but sometimes you know block can come in because you're concerned about oh this has to be good yeah but if someone says write a poem in 60 seconds then that's it like i i do a thing at the moment um i use a website called twitch which is a live streaming website and what i do is i play a video game on twitch but i also have musical equipment with me so i try and write as many songs

in an hour as i can to the events of the video game and what this does is it's impossible to fail because what i'm doing is making songs for the sake of making songs and no one expects them to be good because the parameters have changed it's he's writing songs about a video game live and it's process-based and that for me is wonderful because i get an hour of flow every week that makes me just feel wonderful yeah that, that's, I think, you know, you can see that, you know, you found a way to do something that's within your grasp and not,

the main thing about creativity is that whenever people say not everybody's creative and people need to realize, A, they're talking about another magnitude. They're talking about the level of, I don't know, Einsteins and, you know, people who you recognize as having clear artistic talent and that the reason

we think everything is so out of our reach is because of that like your teacher might have told you teacher who knew nothing told you you couldn't draw but um the main thing is to realize that you're you're being robbed a little bit of the simple pleasures um that you can give yourself at yeah at zero cost um the simple pleasures that give you just so much benefit in terms of a just improving your mood giving you a positive sense of yourself and to do things that are in your grasp and sometimes it might help to have people around so some people you know people do again back to physical fitness people train better sometimes with friends right like they go out and do something like that.

Charades. Charades. Oh, yeah. That's such fun. That's creativity. That's creativity. We all engage in. It's very enjoyable.

There's no right or wrong. But you're expected to think laterally in the moment. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's just, again, another situation where you have very little time. You're thrown into a situation where you have to make sense and do something meaningful in a very short period of time. And it doesn't matter

if you make a fool of yourself. All of that just goes. So if you know what the constraints are that are preventing you from doing something, then try to work around them or find ways in which you can diffuse the situation so that it becomes really more about just people having fun for themselves um you mentioned earlier uh autism and i'm currently

going through uh the diagnosis for autism in my 30s um there's a it just a lot of uh i don't want to say red flags but a lot of things about how I relate to people how I think my specified interests may well be on the artistic spectrum so I'm going through

that process at the moment and one thing I'd like to ask about and a lot of people on the internet asked about is is there a relationship

between people who are autistic or ADHD or neurodivergent and creativity is there a relationship between those two things have you seen it in your work yes I have but yes yes I have to always be careful when we say these things

but of course essentially because of course there are so many ways in which one can be neurodivergent and these sort of it's important to understand that these classifications change very often. Sometimes they become so loose, so as to be, either not. I think we've gone from an era where nothing was really recognized properly to everything is being recognized almost too soon sometimes. So there are issues with how we come to recognize and classify and give labels. And so that's important to to be aware of so a lot of our research that might be quite old you have to keep in mind that the current labels may not you know like they might be a little different now in terms of how you would examine it but so the the link between it's kind of what how I got into creativity is because I was very curious about the association, you know, the

madness creativity link. And I sort of wanted to, I was always interested in mental illness. I'm not sure where that stemmed from. But I think part of it was that I did a lot of volunteer work when I was an undergrad. And I was around a lot of people, even growing up, who clearly had issues. But I did notice that there was something about certain groups where it was clear that there was another side to the story. But it was just my impression. Of course, when you read any... It's an age-old sort of link since, you know, ancient Greece,

the idea that there's an association between certain forms of mental illness. Like, I think they focused very early on, on depression was the big thing then that they focused on. And creativity and so much. And a lot of it was because creativity was really seen as a gift from the gods in some sense. And that, I mean, the reasoning behind it kind of keeps changing over the ages,

but very often you could be, you know, you could get both sides. You could get the gift as well as the curse, which is you get to see the truth, but no one's going to understand you. So you're going to be tortured your entire life. So there was this idea that sort of like what we experience in the flow state very often,

that this is coming from, it's coming from within, but also not within. And it's just coming out there. I'm seeing things that I never thought possible. A lot of the ancient cultures attributed this to spirits outside oneself right and and gods and so on so in some ways it took away from the pressure one felt when trying to create because it was not inside you it was outside you i think elizabeth gilbert talks about this in great detail about how artists a long long time time ago had less stress as a result because it wasn't about their genius.

It was about being sort of the genius. A conduit for God. Yes, absolutely. And so with that came other things, conduits that are there, things that would push you into perhaps developing mental illnesses and so on. So my work sort of looked at, I looked at schizophrenia mainly, but also ADHD. And of course, I've read a lot about all of this in this field and I write about it extensively. So what matters is that, so first of all, there's no simple relationship, I would say.

It's a very chicken-egg situation because it's very clear that some in our modern society, and I can't speak of how things were looked at earlier, but let's say in the past 50, 60 years, when we look at data from there, we can say that there are interesting trends that are remarkable and that can't be swept aside. So there's a lot of sort of birth registry data from Scandinavia. They have systems where they record essentially all your information from birth to death. So you can find out what the average birth rate was, or the birth weight, sorry, was of children born in 1950, whether if you were born in the winter compared to the summer, where there was more likelihood of certain types of diseases occurring,

premature births, so on and so forth. So they have these huge registries that allow you to do, to examine patterns and data. And so there was, I think Simon Kyaga is his name, does most of the studies in relation to creativity using birth registry data. And he has a ton of papers now on this, as well as a book, I think. And he found that, so he looked at if you were, if you had a specific mental disorder, yeah, like schizophrenia, were you more likely to be in a creative profession? Was your parents more likely to be in a creative profession? Were your siblings and so on and so forth? So not just you, not just the person itself, but also their relations.

So not just you, not just the person itself, but also their relations. And what he found was that unipolar depression was not associated with any higher likelihood of being in a creative profession. So what is unipolar? Oh, sorry. That means just sort of acute severe depression. So the comparison was between bipolar disorder, depression, and schizophrenia. Those were the three major severe mental disorders that he was focusing on. So is unipolar depression like the depression

that somebody would get because they're speaking negatively to themselves or because of life events rather than something happening in the brain? i think it's a ladder because it's sort of it's i mean it's it's usually would be linked to some form of neurochemical neurochemical insufficiencies and very often you know is associated with suicide it's really acute depression um that is very very um it's a very severe condition and it's very common um and so there's no association so the age-old link between depression is probably one of the reasons to look at this is it was not found in relation to depression in the modern era at least but um there was an association with

bipolar disorder so if a person was more likely to be in a creative profession and all their next of kin first degree relatives were more likely to be in a creative profession and all their next of kin, first degree relatives were more likely to be in a creative profession if they had bipolar disorder. In the case of schizophrenia, it was only the advantage, if you want to call it that, only extended to your next of kin in the first degree, but not to the person suffering themselves. Right. So that you have. Wow.

So you have these association data that says, well, that's interesting. So then you have the other side of the coin, which is to say, well, a lot of the time when people are suffering from these sorts of severe conditions, what happens is that you might not be in the position to get the kind of other sorts of jobs. You're much more likely to go into artistic professions because other jobs are not open to you. jobs you're much more likely to go into artistic professions because other jobs are not open to you yeah and so so that's why i said it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation that you're not sure if it really gives an advantage on the creativity side or whether it's a matter of well um this no other professions are open to them a third thing of course is that these professions are very hard professions to be extremely successful and productive in um yeah it's these are very very you know a creative professional as someone who has to deal with a lot of instability um they're more likely to have

part-time jobs they're much less likely to have like um they're much more likely to be swayed by anything that happens in the economy so in covid for instance yeah absolutely tanked the creative arts pretty much all over the world um and you got to be in the top 10 percent to get even get recognized exactly right it's it's brutal the competition so the those kinds of stresses are huge risk factors for developing um yeah major mental disorders as well so there is so that's again another one of these chicken and egg things like if you're is it is it being part of that profession that leads to these issues and there's there is some i forget his name really early evidence looking at sort of trawling through sort of historically creative periods right so when people look at the Renaissance, for instance, it was a kind of unique period for the arts

because artists were treated very, very well, could earn very well. And there was sort of interesting ways in which the arts were commissioned. So for instance, if they had a competition for, well, we want to put a sculpture in front of this building and we're going to get 10 artists to work on it and submit their work and one person will win. The person who won still won and only their art went, but all the artists were paid.

Yes. For their efforts. Very important. Paid for effort. Yeah. So for me personally, over the past two years, lockdown was terrible for my creativity. I really need the spontaneity of speaking to a stranger. the past two years lockdown was terrible for my creativity specifically because of what you mentioned there so i really need the spontaneity of speaking to a stranger because of what that

would do to my creativity and when i was stuck with the same four walls all the time i experienced writers block actually that's the last question i want to ask you anna yes what is creative block what does it look like from as someone who studies creativity creative block is a huge enemy to me and when creative block happens I'm not just not creating art and not accessing flow but my mental health suffers massively if I can't create yeah what is creative block well a block is usually when well it's just an obstacle to your ability to be generative in the manner that you want to be generative, whether it's composing a piece of music or writing. I think block happens less in the visual arts than it does for writing. And I think that's it.

Because with visual arts, you can mess around. You might be unhappy with what you're producing. The process is immediate and direct and you can that's it just because with visual art you can mess around you might be unhappy with what you're producing the process is immediate and direct and you can get into it with music as well writing that's why it's called writer's block writing is fuck like Jesus Christ

if I get blocked I'm not writing and it's very hurtful to sit down and for no words to appear or for the words that do appear to be ones that come from my closed mode of thinking. As soon as I think about block, then I'm in the closed mode. I'm critical and I can't access flow and I feel terrible. Yeah. And I think this is what I was sort of saying. The creative process is different depending on the specific practice that you look at right so

creative so blocks definitely is something that writers experience i think even songwriters do it sometimes yeah so um especially when they need that next hit yeah oh i can't i mean i just look at songwriting and think this must be really hard so a lot of like great songwriters will write about let's say the struggles that they experience or whatever and then their whole life changes when they get really famous or very good and suddenly you have less access to a lot of the source material that you would normally have access to where you struggling you know um and that that must be that i see is that there might be different reasons for blocks happening and for if in the case of songwriters who especially get to be very very successful um you occupy a different space now that is that is that is a space of comfort from which it is much harder to have adoration is very dangerous and that's someone in particular

that was a huge issue he was being adored and he didn't feel deserving of that adoration. It really hurt him and it hurt his creativity. Yeah, and I think people said there your sensitivity gets blunted and people who are very aware of the creative process, this can be torture for them. And I think with writing a book and so it's much, much

worse because it's just the task in front of you is so enormous and you can't mess around as much as if you're a songwriter you can still try to like stimulate your senses by playing on an instrument or go you know things like that trying to get together with people and just just have you know have a bit of a jam session or something you can try to trick your way out of it with writing it's less so i try automatic automatic writing if i'm really stuck like if i'm really stuck i'm typing and i'm typing and i'm not thinking about what i've

typed that's the closest thing to picking up a guitar but with words yeah and i mean the work of alice flaherty is probably the most relevant to you she's written a great book called the midnight's disease it's all about creative block and the opposite oh lovely opposite, hyperlexia, which is the incredible drive to want to just write. Like every waking moment you have, you know, to spend, even if it's a minute, people who are hyperlexic will tend to start off. It's just a state-based thing. It's not really a, it's not like people suffer from bouts of hyperlexia. And she has this theory of creative motivation and about how, and she experienced it firsthand.

So it's a great book because it really captures what a block is like, what hyperlexia is like, and how both can be incredibly painful things to go through and how it has to do with sort of the brain systems that are involved with creative motivation and how you know dopaminergic systems and so on and she gets into it it's a sort of a poetic scientific book which is very rare to come across but it's this thing about the drive even if you're hyperlexic it's not that you're necessarily writing anything that's good it's just that you have this you're just spurting out words because you need to talk. You need to get that all out of your system. With, there are very famous cases

of writer's block, right? Like, so who wrote the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Very famous for being, what's his name? Arthur. What's his name? Barlux. Yeah. But this is embarrassing. We know what we're talking about. what's his name Arthur what's his name Balox

yeah but this is embarrassing we know this is embarrassing yeah but okay I'm just blocking on names today

so it's so he was renowned for his writers Brox and so much so that his publishers would like lock him into a

into like a hotel room for a month on end and then he'd be required to produce pages Douglas Adams there we. Douglas Adams. There we go, Douglas Adams. I knew there was an A in there somewhere.

So he, it's very hard to know what to do about it because it is very individual, how to get over it and so on. So you found things that work for you. Very often, it has to do with just the kind of pressures one puts on oneself in order to produce, you know, the pressures you might be feeling. For me, it's my ego. It's my ego.

It's self-esteem. The most harmful thing for me as a creative person is any form, both positive and negative critique are deeply harmful. Yeah, that's interesting. If I release a book and a bunch of people say, this is amazing, I loved it. If I take that praise on and I start to internalize that as part of my self-worth, then it's a double edged blade. Then the criticism, the negative criticism hurts as much. And I know my creativity and my flow only comes from within i have to write the book that i would want to read if i wasn't me

and if i try and create for anybody else i will get blocked because i can't create for anyone else it's a solitary act and it has to do with me and my sense of fun and play and being a professional artist is very difficult because your work is critiqued both positively and negatively so switching that off is a long tough process that requires a huge amount of self-care yeah it's very hard to a not be drawn to the positives and also not to be drawn to the negative like you one can get very stuck on and one negative comment i could see a thousand positive comments in that one negative comment and that's common i could see a thousand positive comments in that one negative

comment is the one that was big and that's common every artist says that absolutely so much of your blood sweat and tears into it that it feels any kind of act and it's an act of generosity writing i feel like when i look at it just like you are being generous with your your thoughts and views to the world and the sort of slights that can come in your way have you have a way of knocking people off course and sometimes you can get so off course it's very hard to find your way back and it's a very slow painstaking process to try and get your way back and usually the kind of things that i read about is a to first figure out what it is that's the obstacle and in your case as you said it's your your ego gets in the way and and the ability to deal with that then figure out a way to try and avoid that and

ultimately it's about setting structure for your practice which is hugely showing up to work which is a show up to your table sit down even if it's just an hour or two at some point it should be consistent I got myself an office I got an office because literally there is a place that I go to

as if I'm an office worker and this is where I create and that's what I did and that's helping me back into a place where I can write and enjoy it and feel like fun because nothing else happens in this space other than um not creativity but the act of trying because if i go in there and say i'm going to create today then i won't but i can always say i'm going to go into this office and today i will try yeah and trying is is very important because trying has no outcome it's just process based yeah absolutely i mean i think he um who says uh john cleese really

talks about this really well i think in terms of how to set up a practice and you identify how getting your own getting a space in which you can work is a really important thing and he trying to think of all the things he points it's space uh time and time is there twice no because space is that twice or the times that twice and maybe time is that twice i forget yeah no space once and then time twice because time is so important because once you set up the space to create you have to tolerate the anxiety of not entering flow and that's that's where you have to in order to go from the closed way of thinking to the open way of thinking that's what requires the time so it's the ability to tolerate the

frustration exactly so leave it for as much time as possible carve out a space and time so a consistent space a space where you can write for instance a time in the day either every day or every two days whatever works that works and then stick time the third time is stick with it as long as you can till you absolutely use all the time you have available to work on it i think he also emphasizes playfulness and humor and no solemnity no yeah i love that it's just like the solemnity is beautiful because you don't think about solemnity but it's so true

solemnity fucking destroys everything and he also points out that solemnity serves no purpose it really doesn't it's true it only serves

pomposity and power absolutely because if you look at where solemnity is most present it's most present in religion the judicial system

the military these are all very solemn spaces where humor is not allowed. So solemnity has no place in the creative process. Yes. And I mean, I couldn't agree more. And it's interesting for me that he's, you know, as a practitioner, he's come up with the best theory of the creative process, I think. And it's very it's also thinking when you're blocked, you have a lot of anxiety. It's very hard to get into a space where humor is possible so even when you carve out the space and time and time for yourself the pressure because when you're trying to write you say i don't want to put pressure but you are feeling

pressure and you are feeling very humorless about the whole thing and so somehow to try and work your way into feeling um feeling lighter you know that's that's really important and for different people it's different things and i think for me whenever i'm in a space where i'm feeling like i'm being really uncreative here or i'm just not i'm being too solemn i'm being too hard on myself i'm just not being in this i try to literally this is when youtube comes in handy for me i would watch something that makes me laugh and usually it's comedy it's usually stand-up comedy because it's sort of smart and witty and funny and it just snaps me out of that funk that I might be in and it's just a temporary

it's a little like lift before I get started on something which is again it's it's nice to see people doing something creative and so something like comedy especially stand-up yes is extremely smart it's extreme if it's done well it's extremely smart it's extremely wise it's extremely funny and it's extremely creative all in one and there are very few um situations where you can get a lot of, what is it called? A lot for very little. So for me, that's sort of something I do because I'm writing a book now and it's excruciating process because I have no time to really devote to it. And very often I'm like, okay, I know this can work and I really enjoy the moment when I'm really writing well and feeling it. There's nothing like it, you know, when you're really in that state feeling feeling it there's nothing like it you know when

you're really in that state of flow or when you're thinking oh this is this is an interesting insight to bring across for instance but to get there I have to let it's like letting all of the you know feel a bit straight jacket it's like letting all opening out all those buckles like letting yourself like yes letting the muscles stop being tense and just be loose um breathing a little bit a lot of people will do sort of some some form of guided imagery before because they can't get out of it and you know there are lots of apps a lot of them are free i think online where you can sort of do a three minute sort of get out of my get out of my head space and i'll get out of your own headspace um allow things to happen so i think for it's very individual what might work for one will not work for another what i what i do um um is is

that's so after so i've added an extra step to junkie's process so after after fun i enter up for me i try to fail so if fun isn't working i deliberately try to fail because it's the fear of failure and my own ego that's preventing the creativity so i think of the worst idea i can possibly think of and i go with it yeah and that's what works for me it's quite genius and then if that fails i i go back to the surrealists and I use random input. So that's when I use cut up techniques or I just go into Google images and look for random images. Yeah. And allow the computer to feed me random inputs.

And I just try and create at these random inputs. Yeah. Trying to fail. That's very important. Like literally, what's the worst thing I could do right now? What's a terrible, awful idea? Let's do it. Let's write about that because that's what I'm scared of.

Let's do it. And often some of my best ideas come from, like I wrote a short story about a girl who moves to Barcelona and she becomes legitimately convinced that her next door neighbor is Donald Duck. And I was just going that's terrible, terrible what an awful book, what a terrible book and I did it and I was so pleased with the end result I was thrilled, I was like

wow this is really creative, this ticks all my personal boxes and it's a 2000 word story about a girl who thinks that her neighbour is Donald Duck only because I did that that I end up with that story because I'm like that's fucking stupid what a silly idea let's do it yes yes

that's great I think what you mentioned about associativeness is important like if you can push yourself to connect unusual things even little exercise like that it kind of loosens your associative strengths of your conceptual networks. And that's also hugely helpful.

And I have got to read that story because it makes me chuckle just thinking about it. Thank you so much for your time there, Anna, because we're two hours there. Oh, wow. Gosh, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. That was such a wonderful conversation. I learned tons about creativity, but just speaking to you as a person,

it was just such a lovely, lovely conversation. And thank you so much for that i really have enjoyed this so thank you for having me on your show so that was my chat with anna abraham check out her stuff at annaabraham.com i'll catch you next week maybe i'll have a hot take just to let you know there'll be no twitch stream this week i'll be back next week because i am working this week. I'll be back next week. Because I am working this week. Away from my studio. So I can't do my Twitch stream. God bless you all. I hope you have a wonderful rest of the week.

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