The One You Feed - Jacob Nordby on Creativity as a Cure

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

Jacob Nordby is an author whose many quests have led him to a deep fascination with life in all of its weird splendor. He’s the founder of Manifesto Publishing House and he penned the award-winning novel, The Divine Arsonist, and a non-fiction book, Blessed Are the Weird: A Manifesto for Creatives.  Today Jacob and Eric discuss his new book is, The Creative Cure: How Finding and Freeing Your Inner Artist Can Heal Your Life. But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!In This Interview, Jacob Norby and I Discuss Creativity as a Cure and …His book, The Creative Cure: How Finding and Freeing Your Inner Artist Can Heal Your LifeHow he defines creativityHow creativity can bring you back to your truest self Why he believes every human being is creativeThe three enemies of creativityThe connection between spirituality and creativityFeeling an inward longing to come home to yourselfRebuilding his life after burning it to the groundHow imagination can work for us or against usAllowing our thoughts and emotions yet not empower themThe three questions he answers every dayHow to create more choice points in our daily livesJacob Nordby Links:Jacob’s WebsiteTwitterInstagramFacebookTalkspace is the online therapy company that lets you connect with a licensed therapist from anywhere at any time at a fraction of the cost of traditional therapy. It’s therapy on demand. Visit www.talkspace.com or download the app and enter Promo Code: WOLF to get $100 off your first month.Feals: Premium CBD delivered to your doorstep to help you manage stress, anxiety, pain, and sleeplessness. Feals CBD is food-grade and every batch is tested so you know you are getting a truly premium grade product. Get 50% off your first order with free shipping by becoming a member at www.feals.com/wolfIf you enjoyed this conversation with Jacob Nordby, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Finding Your Creativity with Julia CameronWriting for Healing with Maggie SmithSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Okay, as soon as I get done with this, then everything's going to be perfect and I'll never be anxious or feel out of sorts or feel like I'm off my balance again. And I'm like, yeah, well, your true self is just laughing about that right now. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that

hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you?

We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Jacob Nordby, an author whose many quests have led him to a deep fascination with life and all of its weird splendor. He penned the award-winning novel, The Divine Arsonist, and a nonfiction book, Blessed Are

the Weird, a manifestifesto for Creatives. He's the founder of Manifesto Publishing House, and his new book is The Creative Cure, How Finding and Freeing Your Inner Artist Can Heal Your Life. Hi, Jacob. Welcome to the show. Hey, Eric. I'm so glad to be here. It's a pleasure to have you on. We're going to be discussing your latest book called The Creative Cure, How Finding and Freeing Your Inner Artist Can Heal Your Life. But before we do that, let's start the way we always do with the parable. In the parable, there is a grandparent talking to their grandchild, and the grandparent says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,

which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at a grandparent and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. You know, this is a parable I've loved for a really long time. And I woke up in the middle of the night, actually, and something prompted me to think about this. And I was just sitting with, what does that mean to me? And I began to realize, Eric, this to me is, I mean, there's the

obvious face of it layer. Like it's wonderful to feed the parts of ourselves that know how to be a better person and be a more healthy person. I love that level. The other thing, though, that I began to realize was, oh, my God, I've spent years asking various parts of that question and then developing practices and have found some very interesting, practical, earthy ways to feed the good wolf. And I assume that a good number of those practices are in the latest book. Yes. And I'm delighted that we're talking about the book. I want to be clear that I told my publisher before we released this one, I said, I wish we could find a different word than creative. It's kind of like the word love or God or something. It's so big and it's come to mean

so many things that for a lot of people, it starts to feel like, oh, this is just for those people, those writers or those artists or those genius inventors. And what I want to do though, is say that what we're talking about, the theme of your show is connected to what I feel like is the core of the creative spark, the energy that brought us here to be ourselves on this planet. Let's start there then. Let's start by exploring a little bit about what creativity means to you. You've got a line in the book, you say, creativity is a forgotten cure for these life depleting ailments and a spiritual practice for returning to your truest self and living the life you love. So that's a little bit

about what creativity does, but in your mind, what is it? It's kind of elusive, I think for a lot of us, you know, like I love philosophy, Eric, I love psychology and I love all spirituality. I love all of these things. And you know what I've felt tasked with in my life is making those things touch the ground for myself. And so for me, as I've been with that question semantically and spiritually and every other way, it really comes down to me. It's sort of synonymous with the soul for me. And again, there's another big word freighted with so many meanings for a lot of people. For me, underlying the word is an energy, is a feeling, is an experience. And to me, that's sort of this

mysterious spark of, okay, something showed up here as me and as you and as everyone who's listening. And before we knew the names for anything or the rules for life or what good and bad was, this spark was here and it's still present. And it oftentimes becomes buried under layers of traumatic experiences and socialization and all of these things. And it oftentimes becomes buried under layers of traumatic experiences and socialization and all of these things. And so for me, the practice then is not creating the spark because I don't feel like that ever goes away. It's healing the connection to it. A little bit like there's the Buddhist idea that underneath everything, there's essential goodness and you've got to uncover it. You start off by saying,

essential goodness, and you've got to uncover it. You start off by saying, you know, you believe that every human being is creative. And so again, some people are gonna go, well, no, not me, you know, like, not me, I don't feel creative. What are the ways that people might be creative in their life that they don't even recognize? Again, there's the obvious ones like, well, I paint or I write or I play music. But what are other ways that the creative impulse shows up in our lives? That really came home to me. I think several years ago, Eric, I was walking through my brother Nate's office. He was then the head of a tech company and we were walking through and he said, so how's the book writing going? And I told him a little bit about it. And he turned and had this wistful look in his eyes. And he said, you know, Jake, I'm just not that creative. And we were walking through this space and there were teams over here,

development teams working on things and people over here doing things. And we walked into his office and he sat down in front of three screens, Eric, and it looked like the matrix code running down it. And I watched his posture change. And, you know, it was like, he was sitting down to a grand piano and he, he kind of forgot that I was in the room with sitting there working away. And I tapped him and said, Nate, you just said you're not creative, but when you sit down in front of your work in front of what you love to do so much, it's like watching a coder version of Mozart. Like I'm watching you create something. And this to you is aliveness. This is connection. This is creation. And that's just one example.

And that began this process. Then Erica pulling that thread and saying, okay, there's this misconception about what this, there's a lie. Somehow we believed a lie. And this was also then amplified for me when in 2019, the World Economic Forum came out with their every five years study of what are the skills and abilities we need to improve on to survive in our careers. And these are big money, big data people. And creativity had moved since the previous time they had done this study. It had moved from the bottom of the list to number three. Some other things had entered the list for the first time, like empathy and people-related skills, softer skills. And that was interesting. So I did a study with 10,000 people and said,

what's your greatest creative challenge? And 74.3% of them responded and said, I doubt my talents and abilities. I don't think I'm good enough. So that was kind of the Newton's apple on the head moment for me. Okay. There's something, we know we need it. We don't really seem to know what it is or who it's for. We have to figure this out. So that's been quite a process since then to keep asking that question. And so one of the things that you identify early on in the book are three enemies of creativity. So I assume these are, you know, doing that analysis of like, well, why are people feeling like they're not creative? What's getting in their way of the belief that you have is that underneath it's there. And a lot of

us are saying, well, I don't see it as there, then there's these blocks and the three that you identify. Do you want to walk us through those? Yeah. So let me see if I can pull these out of my head right now. Socialization, which the Toltecs would call domestication. So socialization, rejection or the fear of it or and the fear of it, and then traumatic experiences. So say a little bit more about what those mean and what ways do they get in the way of our creativity? Yeah. And I'm curious if you're willing for me to put you on the spot a little bit as we talk through this. Is that all right? Sure. I'm happy to be on the

spot. Well, I love being interviewed, but I really love real conversations so much more. And yeah, yeah, no. And I've spent some time on your site and looked at your show and I love the work you're doing. I love how you're asking these questions and leading people into a truly deeper experience of themselves, of life, of healing, you know, and sometimes these things stay at such a conceptual level that people can walk away and go, okay, that's, it's good to be more loving. It's good to be more compassionate or whatever. How do I do that? And so I think stories going into what are the real stories of these things can really be helpful sometimes. But yeah, domestication or socialization, what's interesting to me about this one, Eric, is that this isn't some evil force. It is the process by which we

learn how to be humans as we currently know that, which means that everything we learn to do like talk, read, ride a bike, use the bathroom, eat everything. We have to learn by mimicry. We have to learn by people saying, this is how you do that. But then at some time at age 35 to 40, a lot of people, a lot of us wake up. I certainly did at age 34 and look around and say, I don't even know who I am. I don't know exactly what I want. I've built a life. I feel the prison walls around me of this life, but I don't even know how to find my North star again. I don't know how to find my way back to a self that could even tell me what's real, what's important. And so where were you at that point?

Like, what were you doing when that sort of landed on you? Well, I was driving into the parking lot of a new building that my brothers and partners and I had designed and built for this enterprise. We had just launched several years before. It was on fire. And everybody in the community was looking at us saying, wow, you guys are really sharp. You're doing wonderful things. And I just bought this big, beautiful house. And I walked through that

office and I looked around and said, why does my heart feel so heavy? Why, when I look around me, does this feel like I can't wait to get out of here and I don't know where I would go. And was this a tech company? It was several. It was a mortgage company. It was a real estate investment firm in the tech company? It was several. It was a mortgage company. It was a real estate investment firm in the tech company. Yeah. Got it. Got it. And you had just realized that you had sort of succeeded in achieving what you thought you wanted to achieve. There you are. And it doesn't feel right. Yeah. A young guy who was working for me 2007. Wow. It feels like three lifetimes ago, came into my office in the summer and said,

Hey, I'd like you to go to this meditation retreat with me. And I'd been reading Deepak Chopra and Marianne Williamson and Wayne Dyer, but I had never learned how to meditate. And I said, Oh, I should probably learn how to do that. Okay. I'll do that. And I didn't know why though, Eric, I had all these fears. I looked back and realized it was my ego self was really afraid of what was coming. And I didn't know why I thought meditation was pretty, pretty chill, you know, but I ended up getting in his truck a couple months later and we drove up a couple of hours into this mountain town and got up to this beautiful cabin lodge and somebody opened the door and they had long hair and there was like, I don't know, sage or incense in the air. And somebody was tapping on a hand drum and like,

I don't know, sage or incense in the air. And somebody was tapping on a hand drum and like, oh man, I'm not in Kansas anymore. What's getting ready to happen. And it turned out to be a shamanic initiation. I didn't even know what a shaman was at the time. And they administered very powerful. Now it's in very common part of the conversation, you know, DMT, but I had never been high. I'd never been drunk. I didn't know anything about any of this stuff. And that was really a date with destiny. Yeah. It's quite an introduction. Yeah. Yeah. Let's just jump right off. So it sounds like that was a pretty transformative experience. What happened next, you know, in your life? Well, it was during that experience, Eric and my brothers, you know, who I went back to the next week and then what happened the next couple of years, they were deeply confused by it and, you know, upset by it because things started to change. And they said, what?

You went up in the mountains and took drugs. Like what? So now why is everything changing? What happened there, though, is this contact with an original self, with the universe, with something that was alive and freedom, Eric. For the first time, probably all of my life, I experienced this freedom from fear. And looking back at my growing up years, my childhood, much later as I delved into trauma studies and things, I began to realize I have been shaping my entire life from the basis of fear. I have been creating everything in this bathe, in this fear, in this anxiety and trying to get away from rather than moving toward something I would love to create. So I would like to say it

was all tidy. And I just, you know, had that experience and then got myself aligned and started taking strides forward. It wasn't tidy. It was this tremendous process of surrender to some tug inside that said, you need to keep going. You need to keep moving toward something that feels real, even though you can't see the outlines of it yet. And that led you into writing? Yeah. So the financial meltdown in 2009 wiped me out, which was great because I had been struggling so hard to keep everything together. I'm the oldest child and how this pressure, you know, to keep it all together. And then it was taken out of my hands. And suddenly I was without all the things, without my titles, without

retirements or companies or identity or credit score or anything. Oh, I had one. It was just really bad. So I felt like I needed to move. And my then wife was actually such a help in that. She said, I think we need to get out of here. Like this town is full of ghosts for you. And so we looked around and eventually moved to Austin, Texas. And it was during that time that I've had this part-time job in a warehouse. and I was the only one there just waiting for these orders to come in. I had all this time, Eric, and I was deeply depressed and deeply afraid and confused. And that's when I began reading The Artist's Way, actually. And so I began journaling for the first time, really, as a study thing. And it was during that time that I had this tap on my shoulder. And the question was, what are you going to do with this time that you have? You've been waiting

all of your life for freedom to follow your dream of being a writer, because that was one of my earliest dreams at age 10. And you have time now. So are you going to waste this time? And so that's when I began writing. And that's when my first book started to form. That is a journey. I love how you talk about how untidy it was, how much fear there was in there. There was a lot of unpleasantness in a transition into a life you really wanted. And I think that's always good to know because I think people tend to think like it's all easy or positive, you know, that when you move from doing something into the life you want and you arrive in a place where you're like, this is really what I want, that that's easy. And it's often a very hard fought battle.

Well, yeah, this is where I'd love to, if you're willing, I'm sure you've talked about this so many times, but I would love to hear, you know, you said before you were in software development and different things, and then it took time to create what you've created. And I would just love to hear a little bit about that if you're willing. Sure. I mean, it's a little bit of a long story, but I started a solar energy company in about 2008, and I worked really hard to try and make that work. And we had a couple of years that were pretty good, but then the state of Ohio kept sort of changing its legislation around energy. And it just eventually, after like the third time that we had millions of dollars of deals

just kind of go up in smoke, I was like, I can't do this anymore. And so I stopped doing that. And I was just doing software consulting in my sort of field, but I was kind of bored. And I thought, well, I'll just start this podcast. You know, I just wanted to do it because it sounded like it would be fun to do. I thought I needed it because I was, you know, I just needed the emotional sustenance. And I wanted to spend more time with my best friend, Chris, who's our editor and producer. And so I just sort of started it on a whim, but it went well. Surprisingly, people were really listening and it kind of took off. So a few years into that, I started to think, well, maybe I could do this for a living. You know, maybe I could do this. Like, this is what I do. Cause I started doing some coaching work

with people and I just thought this feels right. This feels like the right place for me. But it took me, you know, even from that point, another probably two and a half to three years to grow the podcast to the size financially where I felt like I could make the leap, right? Like I was still primary breadwinner for a family. I had a son about to start college. I prefer not to go the route you did, which is like lose everything and start from nothing. I was like, well, you know, if I can avoid that, that might be best, right? And so it just took me years of kind of doing both, you know, doing the software work and doing this work. And, you know, there's lots of interesting lessons in how those things work

together. But for me, it was just a gradual process. And then at a certain point, making what felt to me like a educated leap, still a leap of faith, still walking away from a lot of money in a particular career, but also not doing it blindly and having a sense of like, all right, there's at least a path forward here. And it's been, I don't know, has it been three? I can't keep track of time. I feel like it's been three years since then and we're still going. So it's, it's working. So this is a question my brother and I ask all the time because he comes from, you know, the way his brain works in the Myers-Briggs world, he's an INTJ. So he tends to process very intellectually first. And when I went my own way there for a while, he told me, Jake, I followed you all my life. He's my next sibling.

And he said, I can't go there with you. And I really felt like my earliest best friend diverging. Our paths were going separate ways. And I felt a lot of sorrow about that. And then over the years, somewhere about two or three years ago, he began to have these experiences of panic attacks as the head of the tech company that we had started. And he would show up at the hospital and they would say, no, you're not having a heart attack. You're not dying. In fact, you're really in great health. And so that began this process of him going, okay, but

something's not working. And then he began to pull his own threads and he got into Dr. Joe Dispenza and Dr. Bruce Lipton. And he took this sort of more intellectual path. And then now we're doing many of the same things, meditating every day, journaling every day, doing these practices. And I love that, but that has become this really important conversation to both of us, because I feel so strongly, Eric, that there are many, many people out there who feel left out of the conversation when it comes to spirituality or some of these things because they don't like the way it's framed or they can't understand it. They go, I'm just not that kind of person. But Nate just told me, he said, Jake, there was a soul hunger.

And he's like, I kind of don't like the way I say that because it sounds floaty. But he said, that's the only way I know. He's like, there was something don't like the way I say that because it sounds floaty. But he said, that's the only way I know. He's like, there was something in me that woke up and said, I want more. I'm not satisfied with just making money and just creating things. And he's like, that became insatiable. So I'm curious for you at what point something became insatiable and not just in the terms of leaving a certain career behind, but just to pursue this theme, this thing that you're doing now and sharing with the world. Well, pretty early on for me, I think, you know, I was going to point to, you know, at 24, I was a homeless heroin addict. And when I

got sober, that was a real launch into what matters in life. And I got sober in a 12 step program and a 12 step program, they say a spiritual experience is what you need to recover, you know? So I was sort of going to questions of meaning and spirit and connection really on sort of, you know, a life or death sentence, it felt like, right? Like, I really had to do it. But I realized I loved it, and I was really interested in those ideas. And so that waxed and waned some over the intervening years as I had a career. But I think, you know, I was really involved in 12-step programs for a while. I was very involved in some Buddhist groups for a while. So I feel like it's been there for me for a long time now.

This podcast was just the latest sort of iteration of it. And the one that actually worked well enough that allowed me to sort of do it at an even deeper level and do it more of the time without having to say, okay, well, eight hours of my day goes over here. So I'd say for a long time, I've kind of had that. I mean, it's one of the benefits of burning your life to the ground early is that I was forced to very quick, very early on go, well, okay, what's important here? What matters here? What do I want? It doesn't mean that I didn't wander down, you know, putting career maybe more important than it should, but I feel like there's a time in life where that's kind of our energy. And I had a child and so there was providing for the child. And so all that comes together in promoting career to some degree. But I feel like at the same time, my alcohol and depression have always lurked close enough. I know what makes those things better. And it is a connection to something deeper, something more meaningful. When I stray too far away from meaning and

connection, I get in trouble. Yeah. I love hearing the various paths, you know, and not that there's a path to get somewhere specific, but the path to connection, the path to healing that connection. And then I love how you pointed out the practice, you know, and also the, the waveform, the waxing and waning of that sense of purpose or connection. People come to me and I do work probably as you do with some guidance and people sometimes who have been, you know, very intent on some sort of awakening or some kind of transformation, they'll hit a point after a year or two. And they're like, I'm kind of scared because I don't feel all that intent about this right now.

I feel kind of bored. And I just know that if we take this back to kind of where we started, that spark, that true self, it knows the way through all of the parts of life. It also knows the way through the practicality. And there's not something that's better or worse about any of that as I see it. It's like navigating the sea. It's like you're not going in a straight line. And people who get really focused on, I've seen it happen in workshops and people taking courses. It's like, okay, as soon as I get done with this, then everything's going to be perfect. And I'll never be anxious or feel out of sorts or feel like I'm off my balance again. And I'm like, yeah, well, your true self is just laughing about that right now. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk

gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today.

How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really?

That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Really. No Really. Go to really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really? No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think there are inevitable ups and downs and periods of intense focus and periods of

stepping back. And, you know, I think those boredom periods or those dry periods are always really interesting periods to discern. And I was going through one a little bit recently with my spiritual practice. After having, you know, a few years of really powerful awakenings and insights and deep committed practice, I hit this point where I was like, I just don't really feel like doing this a whole lot right now. And I was a pretty dedicated Zen practitioner working with a Zen sangha. And I talked with my spiritual director a fair amount about this. Like, is this a time for me to pivot direction a little bit and go after some areas of this that feel really interesting to me?

Or is this a time to say you're hitting this sort of inevitable dry period and the task here is to learn to work through it? And that's deep discernment. And I don't know if I discerned it correctly or not, but I discerned it as I was going to explore some other spiritual directions that felt really interesting to me, at least for right now. So I think those are always the sort of questions. And like you said, I think it's really helpful to have guidance along the way to have somebody to at least talk to my spiritual director didn't have the answer. Matter of fact, I ended up doing the opposite of what he

what he thought was the right thing to do. But he asked a lot of right questions that got me in the direction of, okay, I think this is what I want to do. Like, and for me, it ended up with like, I have always trusted my curiosity. I have always trusted when something is sort of calling me. And when I mean calling me, I look and go, well, is it, you know, I've been called by heroin, right? So I'm going to say that like, okay, not everything that calls me is a good idea. But taking the self destructive things out, I've always followed my curiosity. And I just realized I had a curiosity about some different types of spiritual practice. And I was like, you know what, I'm going to trust that. I'm going to trust that there's something in that for me. There's something that's calling me in that

direction. And and I'm going to choose to listen to it. But there may be another time in life where the answer is to say, no, I'm going to stay. I'm going to stay and really work through this. Yeah. Well, and Eric, I feel like this is so important for the world. I spent the last eight years working with Hierophant Publishing and Insight Events USA. And I just had the incredible benefit of becoming real friends with people like Don McGarrow-Weese, the Four Agreements guy, and Dr. Joe Dispenza, and Julia Cameron. It was an amazing experience to get to know these people behind the scenes. I guess Dr. Joe, not as much,

but we helped produce these events for a long time. But what I noticed was with Dr. Joe being an exception, almost everyone else, the people showing up to buy the books or come to the retreats or seminars, by and large, they were a certain category, a certain demographic. And it was by and large, middle-aged white females and generally affluent. And by the way, that's an absolutely wonderful demographic. And I began to notice this. There are so many people feeling left out of what's happening there. They don't feel like it's for them. They don't feel like they could possibly get there. They're just like, I'm just not wired that way, which is why I feel like we see a lot of men of our age. How about how old are you? 51. Okay. So I'm 48 and a half.

Oh, I would have given you, I would have thought you were a decade younger than me at least. Oh, you're awfully kind. Yeah. So I think that our generation of men, Eric, generation X, whatever we call that, I feel like by and large, we're something of a lost generation. And, you know, I don't mean that like some negative thing. I just feel like many of us were raised by parents who had been at some level connected to the counterculture. My parents were hippies when I was born and they were very passionate about that. And then my mother told me, you know, she was right in the heart of Haight-Ashbury in 1969. So right at the epicenter of everything big. And she said, yeah, Jacob, we thought we could drop enough acid and give enough positive vibes and the world would change. And she said, yeah, Jacob, we thought we could drop enough acid and give enough

positive vibes and the world would change. And then sometime about the time you were born in 73, the party started to be over. There was really crazy racial stuff going on in San Francisco. And there was the Manson murders and we were having kids and we didn't have jobs and there was no food. And she said, we just, we just had to quit. And she said, we felt terribly disappointed and disillusioned by the idea that something that felt so real and alive, we had to give up. And so they went back to, in their case, they jumped right into really extreme Christianity, but also went back to getting the regular kinds of jobs and raising us that way.

And so I feel like our generation of not just men, certainly, but I observed this a lot with men, many of us were conditioned, certainly, but I observed this a lot with men. Many of us were conditioned, were socialized by parents who were disappointed. Therefore, they weren't really teaching us about life from this place of these are deeply held convictions. It was like, no, sit down, get good grades and somehow just get yourself out of here and go get a job so that you can survive because our old things didn't work. So I'm looking at very broad categories here, but I just see a lot of men of our age feeling spiritually disconnected and also feeling somewhat cynical. And so there's a lot of what I call now like mixed stoicism out there and it's an ethos, right? It's good stuff, but it also doesn't quite scratch the deeper itch for a lot of us in saying, okay, I don't know that I want to go all the way down one of these, you know, wisdom tradition paths

or anything super new agey, even though I've kind of done all of that. But I do want something that feels like it goes beyond just a sort of sterile code for this is how I live my life. Does that make sense? Totally. Totally. sort of sterile code for this is how I live my life. Does that make sense? Totally, totally. Well, I mean, I think there is a deep yearning from a lot of people for more meaning, you know, a life that has more meaning. I actually think it's embedded in

all of this, right? I mean, and I think most human beings will hit a point where they start to look for that. I've always found Hinduism interesting because they talk about the stages of life. And they sort of say, you know, like your 30s, mid 40s is going to be a time that you, you know, late 20s, you're gonna be very focused on career and family. That's what those years are for. And then you're going to emerge on the other side of that. And spiritual questions are going to come alive for you. And you're going to start to think about meaning and you're going to start to think about legacy and you're going to start to think about what ways am I contributing. Now, again, we are talking broad demographics. Not everybody follows those things. But I have always loved that they sort of have said, you know, that's that's a kind of normal progression.

And so if you're a 50 year old man, you're probably going to start to notice a hunger for meaning. Now, a lot of people may not intuit what's happening. I think that's where you get the cliche of the 50 year old with the 25 year old wife in the sports car, right? But it's because there's a sense of something's not right. And my experience is that when we get that sense of something's not right, some people just double that when we get that sense of something's not right, some people just double down on the paradigm they already have, which is like, okay, something's not right. So I need more of it, more money, more status, more whatever. Or some other people question the paradigm and they go, wait, I've got a fair amount of that stuff. And it seems

to not be really working. Maybe it's a different direction. God, I love this conversation. So if you look at this through the lens of Maslow's hierarchy, the basis of that pyramid are survival. And then you have an upward mobility and the very apex is, you know, self-actualization. And of course, all of these are these big words and concepts, but I think what you just described is what happens for so many of us. And Carl Jung would absolutely agree about. I love the sense like the Iliad is the going out and the Odyssey is the coming home. And I've just been reading more Jung lately. time, it's the inward longing begins to wake up in most people in some way of it's time to come home. It's time to come home to myself. And if you look at it through Maslow's, it's like when we start bumping our heads, let's say in midlife, if we've achieved enough, enough survival levels type things, and maybe even some of the higher order needs then of, you know, esteem or prestige

or whatever it is in community, we can start bumping our heads on the floorboards of the next level up, which is actualization. And oftentimes we find ourselves trying to answer the questions of the higher order with lower order answers like, well, I guess I just need to have a third home now, or I need another sports car or whatever it is. And that we know, you and I know that doesn't really satisfy, not long-term. And by the way, nothing wrong with second and third homes. I want to be clear about that. Whatever is true and alive for anyone is, I feel like really good. That's right. That's right. Yeah. That's interesting that you think of it that way, because that does seem to be one path. One path seems to be, okay, I sort of

ascend through these hierarchy of needs, and I get to a point where I'm the next. The other is sort of the path that I was put upon, which is, I've just burned my life to the ground completely. You know, and I'm sort of forced into, forced is the wrong word, but compelled by my consequences into seeking deeper meaning also. So I think there's nothing like life crisis as far as a transformation tool. I love taking apart these ideas, these concepts like Maslow's or any of the frameworks, because I don't feel like any of them explains it completely, but they can provide sort of works because I don't feel like any of them explains it completely, but they can provide sort of examples, I think, for us. And for me, that one, I did the same thing, Eric. I burned my life to the ground or it was burned down. In fact, the title of my first book was The Divine

Arsonist because that's exactly how it felt. Everything is gone. And so that actually was the first time I had consciously, I've been reading all the books and success literature and trying to do all of the things sort of hyper-visionally for all those years. And that was the first time I think that I was, I like your word compelled. I was compelled to ask myself questions like, who am I? What do I truly desire? questions like, who am I? What do I truly desire? Before that, those had been sort of unconscious, automatic reactions to life. Well, I just guess I need to go out there and flail around and build a business and make more money because I'm not feeling safe with the amount that I have now. And the more money I had, the less safe I felt, which was interesting. But having a time of poverty in midlife there, early midlife, was actually really useful because I got to ask the questions, do I need to basically take a vow of poverty and be a renunciate for the rest of my life? Because that felt like a very valid path for me at the time.

And I began to look around and go, that's not what I truly desire, which allowed me then to begin making choices little by little, step by step back toward a life that felt like it had some additional meaning or more meaning than what I was doing before. I want to take a second here and sort of see if we can pivot this to some of the ideas in your book. I'm going to keep dragging you back. Promote your damn book, Jacob. Your publishers on the other line, they're like, get on track, man. That's so funny. Some people, you can't drag them off their book, no matter what you do. Every third line is, well, in my book, I'm like, okay. But I do want to talk a little bit about this idea, because as you were talking, it came to mind. And it's the idea of imagination,

because you were talking about imagining what sort of life you wanted. And I've over the last X number of months, I've started to think about imagination a lot more. And your book was just another sort of input into that for me about the power of imagination. Let's talk a little bit about the role of imagination in connecting back to who we really are. Well, it's such an interesting thing. I was driving down the road one day and was really asking this question. I'm like, that feels like there needs to be, there's some simplicity here about this question of what even is creativity? What does it mean to be creative? And I, again, felt like kind of the Newton's apple on the head. I actually pulled

over and wrote it on the back of a, on the back of an envelope or something, this creative formula. So it came out. It's like, oh, interesting. So there is a structure and imagination is the very first thing. So the creative formula is imagination plus feelings and stories plus actions equals result. And I began to realize, oh, we are literally creating all of the time every day. So whether we are conscious of it or not, we are employing this formula and we may be creating wonderful things or maybe creating destructive things or just purely unconscious things. And I look at unconscious things often as more like clutter rather than just purely destructive, but it's like, okay, my life is getting more and more junked up with this clutter. So imagination though. So if I begin to picture what I would desire in any moment, rather than just letting kind of the unconscious

old patterns run the show, I can actually begin moving the needle a little bit toward something that would be a desired result. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too?

Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening?

Really, No Really. Yeah, Really. No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You basically said we can't get rid of imagination. And so since we can't get rid of it, what ends up happening for a lot of us is that the imagination turns into imagining all the ways that things could go wrong in our lives.

That really hit me and struck me in that, yeah, a lot of our imagination, that's the direction it goes. Well, now we're back to the three enemies of creativity. Since we're talking about the book, socialization, rejection and the the fear of it and traumatic experiences. This became very personal to me, Eric, before I wrote the final draft of this book, because I was going through a period of depression and, you know, this is after years of meditating and years of, you know, teaching and all of this stuff. And I was feeling pretty ashamed about that. It's like, oh my God, you know, I should know better than this. But during that period of real depressive episode, I began to, rather than treat the depression as an enemy, I think for the first time in my life,

I made space and asked it what it needed. Like, this is a feeling, this is here for a reason. And what was interesting is a younger version of myself showed up, I guess, in imagination. as a younger version of myself showed up, I guess, in imagination. And he said, can we please just rest? I'm so tired. And that was interesting. It was also during that time that I was reading The Body Keeps the Score, a book on trauma, and also The Deepest Well, another book on trauma. And what was interesting is I'd been reading those books for the information and for improving my work. I began to see myself in the mirror. And it was no longer something to read and then share with other people. It was like, I need to develop a practice. And it was during that time that I learned the role that early

traumatic experiences. And I want to say this to everyone listening. Some people have what's considered on the more clinical scales, extreme trauma. Other people take the same assessment and go, I don't have anything. So why am I still broken? And so it doesn't require an extreme level of trauma to begin to darken or create static in the connection to your true creative original self. Many things can happen and it's basically unavoidable in our world. And I think that a lot of us don't want to take on the label of trauma victim, for example, because we don't identify that way. But this is coming back to that

idea, Eric, of since it's the first step in every creation, imagination, the fact is that those three factors step in over time and they do develop a darkness in our imagination for most people. It's really rare to run into someone who came into adulthood without being taught through the don't do that. You're not good enough. You're dumb. You're not going to fit in. I don't feel safe. If you look at the core beliefs that are way down in the roots, I'm not good enough. I don't belong. I'm not lovable. I'll be rejected or abandoned. Those things often aren't at the front of our brains running the show, but they are deeply down there. And so learning how to address those, learning how to give them their say, but then also really start healing and creating new neural pathways.

This is a practice. And for me, it has developed as something that has to be a kind of non-negotiable practice in my life. I don't meditate now because that's going to get me closer to enlightenment or because I'm following a particular wisdom tradition. It's like this is a daily routine, a daily hygiene practice to keep me in touch with and heal and keep the heaviness of those old beliefs on their way up and out, sort of keep metabolizing them and then make space for something better to support my life. There's a bunch of things in what you just said there. I can't decide quite which thread I want to pull, but I think I'm going to

pull on this thread, which is in your book, there are a couple different times where I felt you sort of wrestling with a question that I wrestle with a lot. I think you'd be a great person to have a good conversation about this with. And it's this idea of allowing our thoughts and emotions to be kind of what they are and ask them what they have to teach us and what they have to show us and healing them. And at the same time, how do we balance that with not empowering them or living in them or from them? So for example, you talked about writing your book, right? And I thought the way you talked about the creative formula for writing your book was really interesting because you did talk about how you've got these fears that are saying you can't do this. You're not going to be able to do this.

You're not good enough. So you didn't automatically squash them with positivity, but you also didn't let them sort of run all around and take over the whole place. So how do you balance those two sort of ideas of allowing thoughts and emotions to be what they are, ask them what they need, etc. And also then putting in better, more useful, positive beliefs? Well, now we're back to just the daily practice, Eric. I feel that there is no benefit to trying to affirm or positive my way over the top of things that are there. And as you just said, there's also no real practical benefit in just wallowing in those things. And so what I've found is I use a very simple daily journaling practice and it's in the book. It's also available on my site as a free download. And it's a set of three simple questions. And I do this literally every day. How do I feel right now?

What do I need right now? And then what would I love or how would I love to feel? Sometimes that's a better way to ask the question, depending upon what I'm in the middle of that day. I've found that this actually helps me as a precursor to attempting mindfulness or meditation also, because what happens in those three questions for me, it's so simple. And even people who, you know, don't like journaling or have never been journalers, I say, well, then don't call it journaling. It's simply listening to yourself. By the way, when I say a specific pattern, it's like not dogmatic, but I've just found that when I do it every day, it tends to get enough out and it brings the unconscious to consciousness for me. And so when I say, how do I feel right now? I like

to get grounded with that. You know, sometimes it's very physical. I feel tired because I didn't get enough sleep last night, or I'm feeling emotionally churned up about this big change that's underway or whatever. So just the level of honesty with which I answer that question for a few sentences, there's this relief that happens. And this goes back to a lot of us early in childhood, we're taught that our needs didn't matter and our feelings don't matter. And so reaffirming that to myself every day is this sort of micro choice to say, no, I matter. And what I'm feeling right now matters. And also there's some part of me, I view some part of ourself as almost like a toddler and you and I have both had children.

So, you know, as a three-year-old is not going to say, daddy, I need a drink. At some point it's gonna get louder and louder and something's going to break. They will get our attention. And I feel that way about parts of the self as well. It's like, if I don't pay attention to this or at least give it some place to have something to say,

something will eventually break. It's going to find a way to get my attention. So that's one of the practices that I've developed in my life every day, Eric. So how do I feel? What do I need? Again, this can range anything from more philosophical or emotional needs down to, I feel like I need more money because my tax bill is due. I feel like I need more money because my tax bill is due. Something about the act of acknowledging it on paper, it's a relief. It can be transformative. And also it's interesting how it works with the brain where rather than having this just sort of flying around like a flock of crows, it becomes something now that's on paper. It's outside of me. It's out there and it checks a box internally. So for people who are maybe less right brain dominant, it checks a box and it's like, okay, I'm going to address that. I'm not just letting it sit back there and create anxiety. And then the magic question of what would I love or how would I love to feel when I'm going through, if I haven't for a while, but if I'm going through

times of real emotional turmoil or something kind of acute is going on, saying, how would I love to feel right now? It might be, I would love to feel more confident. I would love to feel more safe. But just getting that out there. And then a prompt that I use quite often is, I am so happy and grateful now that, and begin to write that. And it's interesting. I can show up sometimes to the journal feeling pretty anxious or pretty chopped up in some way. I've noticed though, that developing this as a daily practice actually does something and it tunes me back in. And it also creates sort of a boundary around some of

those things, which in a practical way, Eric, allows me to go back to my life and feel like I'm not ignoring anything. I'm paying attention to these things. Carl Jung might say I'm paying out the shadow in an intelligent way, but it actually allows me to be more rational. And by the way, I'm going to hold up this polyvagal chart. You've probably seen this. It's something I use a lot in my work. It actually got cut from the book. I put a lot of brain research and things and the publisher cut a lot of that, which was fine. I'm happy to email a link to that if you want to put it in the show notes. But I use this as a visual sort of tattooed on the inside of my skull right now, because it's this curve of anxiety.

And at the bottom level, I call it the green zone because it happened to be green on this person's chart. But in the green zone, it's the ventral vagal nervous system state in there. And this is what's interesting to me. You and I have studied and been involved with various wisdom traditions and spiritual practices, but in this green zone is calmness in connection. It's being settled. There's groundedness, safety, connection, safety oriented to the environment, curiosity and openness. There's compassionate experience there and there's mindful and in the present. When I came across this study of the polyvagal nervous system, I began to realize, oh my God, this is the holy grail for personal development, self-help,

spirituality. Like this is the holy grail and it's a nervous system state. There's some very practical physical benefits like better immune response, better digestion. It reverses aging. Oxytocin, we actually begin to feel connected to ourselves and to other people and feel safe in doing so. When I look at a practice like using a journal practice or and some version of meditation or mindfulness, I've come to call it a lot more deeply relaxing. What I've found is that as we get up out of the green zone into the higher levels of anxiety, our left brain wants to interpret that as the place where being the most sharp, the most effective, making the executive decisions. But in reality, that five or 10 minutes I spend

writing down my thoughts and feelings and needs and the five or 10 minutes or 20, some days it's five that I spend deeply relaxing. We might also call that meditating or mindfulness. Those actually move my brain waves and my nervous system into a state where my body is actually allowed to do what it's meant to do. And I actually see the results in my life. I find myself making better decisions. I am more curious. I'm more open. So I also call this the creative zone. It's the green zone. It's the creative zone. It's like we want to find out how to be in better connection with all of that.

These practices actually matter. And I'm loving that we're discovering more and more with brain research that it's very practical too. Yeah, I love to see the brain research, the neuroscience sort of come in and confirm and add insight to what a lot of wisdom traditions have been saying for a long time. I'm all for as many sources of, you know, confirmation to something because it's, you know, life's hard to know, like, what's the right thing to do? Do I have coconut oil or do I not have coconut oil? I mean, the debate is out, right? You know, so I'd love to have like 50 studies

that tell me coconut oil is okay. Like I'm going to feel better, you know? So when the, when the wisdom traditions in the modern science lineup, I feel like, okay, good. I feel a little bit better. And then of course the ever important personal experience, like, okay, does this actually help me? You know, what's it do for me? Um, yeah. Tell me about your meditation practice. What, what does it look like today? What do you do? You see, you call it a deeply relaxing. You've also called it meditation. What is it you're actually doing for that five to 20 minutes or 30 minutes? Well, I've created some meditation tracks or visualization tracks. I actually use my own sometimes, but really for me, even oftentimes it's settling down into my

body. I'll take a lot of deep breaths for about five minutes. I will oftentimes start into that with a practice of breathing in. I'm loved breathing out. I'm safe breathing in. I'm seen breathing out. I'm enough. A lot of times I'll find myself sort of the parts of my psyche and self sort of recollecting themselves. And then I love meditation tracks. I find them on YouTube. There's this great oming one that I love. It lasts for three hours. So generally I'm only listening to 20 minutes of that one. No, but I've found that just by keeping that so simple and actually having in my brain, and it especially helps people like my brother Nate to have a chart like this to go, oh, that's why I'm doing this. But then just, I'll sometimes visualize myself actually moving into the green zone and just allowing the pleasure. So many of these things often feel like shoulds or feel like hard work and the pleasure of deeply relaxing of going, oh, this feels so good and having the intellectual side being supported by, oh, and there's all this information that say this is the awesome stuff happening in my body. That also can help when I'm feeling particularly,

you know, not present, but I just find that spending that five minutes and Eric, I teach in my workshops, I'll teach, you know, let's just close our eyes right now and breathe and count one finger at a time on our knees to 10, one breath with each finger, and then do the same with our toes. And I'm like, with that simple practice that lasts about a minute and a half, you've actually moved yourself closer to the green zone just with something that doesn't require any special mantras. I've done parts of that at a stoplight sometimes when I was feeling particularly anxious. I said, you could do this during a phone call or a board meeting or something. It's like,

you don't have to wait until you have the right pillow and the right meditation track, the benefit of coming back to yourself. And by the way, I feel like this comes back to the theme of your show. I know now from experience and all this wonderful research that as I do these things, I gain what Frankel would talk about the difference between stimulus and response. I widened that gap and I begin to create a space of more choice. And so when people are like, how do I feed the good wolf rather than the bad one? The question is, how can I gain more choice? How can I become conscious that I have a choice right now? And so for me, these practices are the things that create more, more choice, more opportunity for choice toward, listen, I feel like it's a really rare human on the planet who would

choose the bad wolf. I feel like many people have a very small gap between stimulus and reaction. And so finding ways of creating a greater gap there of finding like, oh, I am a powerful creator. I am a powerful creator, but you know what? I'm not if I don't have enough space to make a choice. Yeah, that's perfect. I've often, when people ask me like, what have you gotten out of meditating? You know, why do you do it? And the thing that I most often point to is exactly what you just said. I said, I feel like it has tangibly increased the space between stimulus and response. I feel like it increases that gap where I have more of a chance to say, okay, how do I want to react? Not just externally, that's part of it, but internally also.

Internal stimulus, okay. And instantly, right? Boom. And internal stimulus, all sorts of cascades of thought jump in. But now, you know, sometimes sorts of cascades of thought jump in. But now, you know, sometimes there's enough space to go, hang on. Like, is that true? Do I really need to follow that? You know, and so so it's not just space between stimulus and response externally. It's internally. You and I are out of time. It's snuck up on us. We're going to continue in the post-show conversation briefly while I drag you back to your book again, at least a little bit where I want to talk very briefly in the

post-show conversation, at least about how to be both grounded and wildly imaginative, how to be creative and responsible, how to daydream and reach your goals. Those are direct lines from you and the tools for fostering conscious creativity. So you and I will do that in the post-show conversation. Listeners, if you'd like access to that, as well as lots of other post-show conversations and an episode I do each week called A Teaching Song and a Poem, where I share a song I love, a poem I love, and an idea that you might work with. And the joys of being a supporter of The one you feed, you can go to one you feed dot net slash join. Jacob, thank you so much. This has been really fun. We could probably do it for another two hours and we'll do it a little bit longer. But thank you. I'm looking forward to this and I enjoyed it. Me was helpful to you,

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show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor? What's in the museum of failure? And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast,

or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.