Rick Rubin: This One Morning Habit Changes Your Brain Forever

Key Takeaway

When you feel stuck, do not force another identical attempt. Change one element of the context: take a walk, turn off the lights, work somewhere new, invite one trusted observer, or reinterpret the task for a different person. Hold the question loosely while you move through the world, then return to it. The goal is not to manufacture originality but to interrupt sameness so a fresher response can emerge.

Episode Overview

Rick Rubin and Jay Shetty explore creativity as a universal human capacity rather than a talent reserved for exceptional artists. Rubin argues for making work from authenticity instead of audience approval, using environmental shifts, healthy distraction, immersion, and dream observation to access new perspectives.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Rick Rubin: This One Morning Habit Changes Your Brain Forever from On Purpose. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

What in your opinion has made us so addicted to wanting to become someone that people like and often go against who we truly are. You just said you you like to sense that authenticity and feel how you feel. A lot of people are scared of that. A lot of people would rather mold and become malleable and evolve and become who people want them to be. What Why are we Why do you think that is? People like to be accepted. People want to be accepted. And I'm suggesting in the book that the the best way to be accepted is to be yourself.

It's not It's not to change yourself to what someone else thinks. First of all, you don't really know what someone else thinks. And if you're not genuine to yourself, there's there's like nothing nothing is there. It's just a projection or a mask. It's not true. Mhm. And there's something about authenticity. Like I get to work with artists, some of whom have very different ways of seeing the world than me. And I support their vision a million percent. Even though whatever they're talking about maybe I maybe diametrically opposed to what they're talking about.

But I support them a million percent. And anything I can do to support them getting their message across the clearest they can, I support that. The only way we can um learn anything is through the reality of seeing what's around us and learning there are these different points of view around us. If we're all thinking the same thing, it's boring. Why would we make anything if everyone thinks the same thing? What makes us interesting are the differences. Mhm. And even even the imperfections the imperfections are what makes us humans, what makes us what we are.

It's like um there's so much talk today about chat GPT and AI. It's like it's a different thing than a human sharing their own experience Mhm. warts and all. That's what we love. We love you know, you you may hear a song about um someone who says terrible heartbreak and you may not be experiencing terrible heartbreak but hearing them honestly talk about a human experience even one that we're not having can make us cry, can make us resonate with them, can give us a better understanding of the world.

Absolutely. And we're not all everything, you know, we're all only us. Each of us is ourselves. Yeah, one thing when I was reading your book it reminded me of something else I read a while ago and what I read said that the Japanese say we have three faces. One face that we show the entire world. The second face is the face that we only show our family and friends. And the third face they say we show no one at all. Maybe not even ourselves sometime. We don't even But what you're saying is almost like when we tap into that essence and become that self, that's where all this beauty and imagination and creativity stems from.

Yeah, it's the most it seems to be the most interesting and the most particular, you know, in a sea of information the more yours is personal the more it's not like hers or his or theirs. It's it's yours. Yeah. And for all of us we get more of a a sense of reality even if our views are different than everyone else's it's still helps us understand this is this place that we're in where there are these different views. Interesting. When when I speak to someone who has a different view on anything I always want to learn more.

How did you get there? What can I learn from you? You know, I never assume that I know anything. When we're talking about creativity, you address this fear head-on in the beginning because it is a fear. Everyone has somewhat of a fear. Just as we say things like, "Oh, I can't sing." We say things like, "Oh, well, I'm not creative or I'm not artistic." Or I'm I've never really been a creative. I'm more academic or whatever it may be. We have these again constructs, right and wrong, academic, creative.

Mostly polar opposites. And you're actually saying, "No, no, no. This is something everyone can access and has access to." And do And do access. do access. Yeah, we we just don't all all acknowledge it. Mhm. But deciding to take a different route home because there's a traffic jam in front of you and figuring out the way to go, that's a creative decision. Cooking food and it tasting a certain way and you think, "Oh, maybe it'll taste better if I add this to it." That's a creative decision.

Mhm. We all do them everyday we make creative choices. Anytime we do something that's not exactly the same as the way we did it yesterday, the reason it's different is because we made a creative choice. Yeah, absolutely. As simple as that. as that. Just just a detour in a car. Anything. of this or that. Yeah. What have been the biggest blocks to creativity or to accessing that? What are the biggest blocks? Is it I know and and I'll touch on a few that I'm intrigued by and curious about.

But what would you say are the biggest blocks that people have to being truly creative and imaginative? One big block is concerns about what other people think. Mhm. That's a big one. Mhm. I I made this thing that I love, but I think other people would like it more if I made it different for them. We don't know what they would like. It's a It's a really It's all in our head. It comes back to this thing of what I think isn't good enough. Mhm. You know, if I like it, that doesn't mean anything.

That's what people think. It's like, just because I like it, that doesn't give it any value. It's like, as an artist, if you like it, that's all of the value. That's the success comes when you say, "I like this enough for other people to see it." Not other people like it, so it's successful. That doesn't mean anything because that's other people liking it is out of your control. All that's in your control is making the thing to the best of your ability. I talk about it usually the way I talk about it is greatness.

And that's the way I thought of it my whole life was my interest is in making something great. Greatness, lasting greatness, timeless. And I came to realize recently, it's all an offering to God. And if you're making an offering to God, you're not thinking about, "Oh, what's the budget?" Or I hope I hope these this segment of the audience is going to like it. We don't We don't think like that. It's a higher vibration. We're making the best we can make to the best of our ability out of love and devotion.

That's what it is. And there is no I'm changing it for someone else because it can't be better than this devotional act that we're doing. There is no higher No higher form. Yeah, and that's what you see so much in in nature around us. I've always found like the sun is just selflessly serving and giving. And you see a bush of flowers or you see a tree that's growing fruits. And again, it's providing shade and fruit. And it's just serving. And it's interesting how when you call it a devotional act, the idea that it's it's a service.

It's an offering, as you said, in Absolutely. And even an offensive song is that to someone to someone. It's like, um I worked with band Slayer. And Slayer were a very controversial, aggressive band. And the people who came to see them didn't come to see them in filled with hate. They came to see them filled with love. And for many of the people in the audience, maybe the only experience of love they had was connecting over Slayer. You know, there were there were people in the audience who seemed like other than this thing to devote themselves passionately to, seemed like often hopeless people.

And for them to have something that they loved was beautiful to witness. And that that sounds like one I think you're spot on that that fear of what will people think, what will people say, art versus audience almost. And I feel that that has become such a big challenge in today's world because there's so much data available, social media available, and you get instant feedback, right? So, I think in the past a band would lock themselves in a shed or whatever it may be and then work on stuff and maybe their friends would listen or they would listen and but it would take months before the audience heard it.

Today, you could literally record something in 3 seconds, put it up, and get instant feedback. And so, the feedback loop has got shorter, the time to create something has got shorter, it's easier to publish, and it's easier to get criticism or feedback. And so, do you say that that's creativity being stifled and and is hampering creativity? Absolutely. And the beauty of it is because so much of what's being made is being made that way, that if we choose to make something not like that, it really stands out.

Mhm. This book, for example, it goes against all of the rules of publishing. From the beginning, I I started the book 8 years ago and I met with publishers 8 years ago, told them this is my vision for this book. And all of them said, "That's not the book anybody wants from you. That's not the book." And I said, "Well, it's That's the book I want to write." Yeah. And like, "Well, but surely you'll tell personal stories and you'll talk about Johnny Cash and you'll talk about" It's like, "No, that's not what this is.

Yeah. It's a different book. Yeah. And then I decided not to make a publishing deal then because even the ones who said they would go along with what my vision was, I could see that they really were fantasizing a different book than this book. Yeah. I waited till the book was written and then said, "Do you want to publish this book? Not the book you think is the book that you want me to write, but this is the book that I that I wrote, that I wanted to write and wrote.

Do you want to publish this book?" And then when they read it, they're like, "Oh, yes. We'll publish this." But you're right, you can't control what the audience wants, even if you played every perfect metric in game. No. But we think we can. We We think there's a part of us and that's what I was going to ask you, that almost one end is saying, "I am too worried about what people think." But the opposite almost is the ego of, "I can either control everything perfectly so that this becomes the number one chart-topping song or I'm right and I know everything." Is that Do you see that as a block to creativity and how and And how do you purify that?

I think the the goal is to get to this, this is how I see it. I don't know what other people are going to think. I can't know what other people are going to think. But this is how I see it. And I want to show you how I see it. That's my purpose here on the planet is to show you how I see it. And then I want to see how you see it and where do they line up and where they different? And that's how we make sense of the world.

It's not one story. Yeah. We all have a story. We all have something to say and we can all learn from each other and it's it's fascinating. It's like there's They're the same set of chords used in all the songs, yet new songs keep coming. You know, there's someone who say all the songs have been written. They're They've It keeps happening. It How do you How do new jokes come up? They're all It's like they're all the same, but then they're all different. And how how we interpret it and our each and it comes from each of our life experiences, which are different.

We We each have our own family origin story. We each have our own the places that we grew up, the things that we saw. We could go and do the same thing together and then get back and discuss what we saw and see two completely different things. And it's not like one of us is right and one of us is wrong. We're just noticing different things. There's so many data points to take in and we each take in the ones that speak to us. So true.

Yeah, you you remind me of the famous words of Mark Twain of history never repeats itself, but it always rhymes. And that right there the idea of like Yeah, like the same song doesn't come back, but there's a rhyme, there's a there's the chord, there's the but but it's still different. And And there's some beautiful I want to point out to everyone because one thing I really aim to do here on on the podcast, but also in life is to try and give people really practical tiny steps that they could take.

And you you do that artfully in this book. And there was this section here which identifies why I brought it up now cuz exactly what you said, breaking the sameness. Right? And And we think there's the sameness or completeness. And you give these beautiful examples of things people can do in order to do that. And I just want to touch on a couple of them. And would love to hear some examples from you that where it worked. So, I really like this one, change the context.

So, you say there are times when a singer doesn't connect with a song like an actor whose line reading falls flat. It can be helpful to create a new meaning or an additional backstory to a song's lyrics. A love song might sound different if sung to a long-lost soulmate, a partner of 30 years that you don't get along with, a person you saw on the street but never spoke to, or your mother. Have you I was intrigued, have you ever asked an artist to sing to someone real in their life potentially to get an emotion out?

Yes, there's uh the first example that comes to mind is we were doing a cover of the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face with Johnny Cash, and he read the lyrics and he said, "I don't know if I could sing this song. I don't really feel these words." And I said, "Well, how about if it's a devotional song to God?" He's like, "I could sing that song." And when he changed it to being not singing it to a woman, but singing it to God, he was able to tap into the energy of the song, and he felt the vibration.

He felt he he felt the trueness to him in singing it. Wow, yeah. And so he But everyone still thought the song was about a woman. It is. The song is about a woman. Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah, but there's there's a long history of songs that are love songs that could be to a woman or could be devotional. Yeah. It's interesting when songs walk this line, or when we think we know what a song is about. Yeah. And we think it's about a romantic relationship when it's really about their child.

You know, the these devotional songs. So, and I'm sharing this with all of you who are listening and watching because I know you I know where you're sitting there thinking, "Jay, I procrastinate, I overthink, I don't know how to focus." Which we'll get into all of that. But I want to share these with you because I want you to try them out in your own area in the world the work you do. So, change the environment. If we're looking for a performance of a different nature, it can help to change an element of the environment.

Turning off the lights and playing in the dark can create a shift in consciousness and break the chain of sameness from performance to performance. Other shifts we've experimented with include having a singer hold the microphone instead of standing in front of it, and recording early in the morning instead of at night to access a greater degree of variation. One vocalist chose to hang upside down while singing. Could you tell us some examples of those because I find that again, these are just they're so simple, but we don't do it.

We will sit at the same desk every day banging our head against the wall with the same tabs open on Google going, "Why can't I be creative?" And it's often these physical, tangible changes around us. Yeah. And so it happened in the studio. It's not uncommon if we've played a song three or four or five or six times, and it just feels like it's not getting better, or we've reached a certain peak, and it's really not all it could be, but then it starts not being as good.

Usually when that happens, as soon as you reach whatever peak you're at and it starts coming down, we usually stop playing the song. But one thing we've done in the past also would be again changing the context, turning the lights off in the studio. It changes everything. It's not take seven, it's the first take in the dark. And it changes it changes. The first album I recorded with the Red Hot Chili Peppers was their I think it was their fifth album. And the albums that they had done before, they had all done in traditional recording studios, and them they told me that none of those were good experiences.

So we thought about what could we do for this experience to make it the first different one instead of the fifth if the first four were bad. Could have been the first good one in in the same environment, or we could change the environment and it would be the first of any kind. So, we chose to rent this big house not far from here and record in this mansion. And that was very different than showing up to a recording studio with people working in an office and other musicians in other other places.

We had our whole own world that we created in and some of the members of the band didn't leave during the entire, I don't know, 6 weeks or 2 months. They never left the premises. They just stayed there, slept there, ate there, worked there, and um never left until it was done. Well, yeah, I love that one. Uh invite an audience. This one makes sense, but but I think people need to do more. When an artist thrives on being in front of a crowd, we may bring in several people to watch a session.

Being observed changes how an artist acts. Even if the audience consists only of on one person who isn't part of the project, that can be enough. While some artists may overdo a performance for an audience and others may hold back, most tend to be more focused with someone else present. Even if your art is non-performative, such as writing or cooking, it will still likely change with an observer present. The goal is to find the specific parameters in each case that bring out your best. I I love the idea.

I had a few friends a few years ago. One of their buddies wanted to become a stand-up comic, but he had no experience in stand-up comedy. So, they threw him a stand-up show in their backyard and there were like 15 of us present in the audience. He got announced onto stage in front of an audience that wasn't going to heckle or be the meanest to him, and he got to practice. And it was it was just such a beautiful way, A, to do that for your friends, but to experience that.

And I'm I'm on tour at the moment and this is my break period, but for my test, we were practicing, rehearsing in a small theater in Thousand Oaks. And so, what does the theater said to us is they could throw it out to their local audience members who would have no clue who I was or what I was doing, and they'd come along. Little did I know that we'd have like 50 to 100 people that weekend watching the show just as a rehearsal. And it was so useful to me before I went out, and it was huge, like huge.

So, I love that one. was listening to a story on the way here. I was listening to a podcast in the car and it told a story about the Beatles um that when the Beatles were interviewed individually, they were all these thoughtful, interesting, soulful people. But when they were interviewed, even two together, they became sarcastic and never said much about about anything real, and was much more of a performative, cool, like to look cool in front of the other one. Wow. That just being being with each other changed the way that they appeared in the world.

Mhm. Wow, yeah, that that group aspect is so interesting. You You've just sparked another thought for me that I I think it'll be really interesting to for people to hear. You going back to this, it's interesting again them being on their own allowed them to be more of their authentic, deeper self to some degree, I guess. I think it was in Bob Iger's book where he talked about how he was saying that George Lucas, Spielberg, Tarantino, and and a bunch of others used to almost have a movie mastermind where they'd play their movies to each other before they went out.

And he was saying that that's how confident they felt about their own work because they were showing their competitors their movies, but they weren't scared of anyone stealing an idea or taking a concept because they were so confident in who they were and all their friends were so confident in their styles. And we know that a Tarantino movie versus a Spielberg movie has no similarities. Yes. And in some ways that community, we talk about that in the book, too. Having a community of It doesn't have to be people who do the same kind of artist as you.

But people who just taste you you respect. You like what they do, they like what you do, and being able to share your work back and forth is a really great feeling. Yeah. How have you That's That's a really nice segue. How has that affected how you've learned to filter criticism and feedback? Because again, going back to the world we live in today, because of that instant feedback loop, you can have a hundred comments that are negative on social media. Your song didn't make it. It's not as big as the next album.

You have the top 10 chart, you didn't make it. I think the way everything's measured and broadcasted now can make criticism and feedback in one sense seem louder. Before you went into a room and someone told you you weren't getting a new deal, and no one knew. Today, you didn't get a new deal and the whole world knows and your fans know and the opposing fans know. It's messy. It's like How have you worked on that for yourself in the work you've done and even the artists that you work with who I'm guessing may be more sensitive to it, may not have that natural confidence or groundedness in what it is.

How do you How And even people who are listening today, how do we think about feedback and criticism? Most of the artists I work with don't read any any criticism or reviews of their work, good or bad. Most. Some Some do. And I would say the ones who are the strongest in who they are can even read a terrible review and laugh at it. And that makes sense because when someone gives you criticism, it's telling you as much about who they are as what you've made.

It's like we make things and then we make it with one through our filter, our perspective. And then you receive it through your filter, with your perspective. So even if we both like it, we probably don't like it the same way for the same reasons. We all have our own relationship to it. Everyone has their own relationship to it. So any of these metrics of which is better, like the idea of the Oscars or the Grammys, where we're saying which which album is better than another, it doesn't make any sense to me because it's always apples and oranges.

If you have a Drake and Beyoncé and you're deciding which album's better, well, Drake's album is clearly a better Drake album than Beyoncé's album is. And Beyoncé's album, I'm sure is a much better Beyoncé album than Drake's album is. But the idea that one's better than the other, it makes no sense. Who has a better diary entry? It's like it's it's If we are actually making these personal things, you you can't compare them or compete in any way with anyone else. The only people who we can honestly compete with is ourselves.

It's like, is this the best I can make today? Have I gone further than I've gone before? That's all we can do. That's the only competition that makes sense. Is continuing to evolve and push ourselves artistically and not get complacent, especially in success. It's easy to get complacent once something works. It's like, I'll just keep doing more of that. It ends up maybe one more time you can get away with it. But once three or similar, it stops being interesting. Yeah. Yeah, that's so true. And And it come that comes back to that sameness point that we always And And I'm just addressing things that I know all of you are thinking and feeling right now like or I'm assuming you are.

The idea of Oh, Jay, there's already, you know, when I started making podcasts, I think there were like 700,000 podcasts in the world. And today there's like 2 million plus, maybe even more now. And that's in 3 years it's tripled since I started 4 years ago it's tripled. And so when I started everyone's like, Jay, there's 700 podcasts. You don't need another podcast. You don't need another Exactly, it's too late. Uh and then now everyone's like, Oh my god, there's 2 million podcasts. Like there's too late.

And we do that. We We start again using a metric to set And you'll only feel that way if you're planning to repeat what's already been done. Uh because if if you're not planning to repeat it, then you're one of one. You're not one of 2 million or one of 700,000. It's one of one because the you're only bringing your own essence out, right? Like Yes. just because every other podcast You could be like, There's so many interview podcasts. There are so many interview podcasts. That's true.

And they're all different. all different. Exactly. Like, you know, and we we've got introduced through um your long-term friend and uh my new mutual friend Andrew Huberman who's also been a guest on this podcast. He has a phenomenal podcast. I love his podcast. Um but so different to who I am. So different to what we do. And And And then there's a million other friends that we have that have shows. So the most common thing I hear when it comes to creativity or it comes to tapping into your essence is distraction, overthinking, and procrastination.

Like those words come up from my community again and again and again. And that's the kind of community listening I do like to do where I'm like, Well, what are people struggling with? Because we're trying to help. What are people's challenges? I I have to know from them what they think it is. And then I'll also share in in way I do. Have you or anyone you've ever worked with ever dealt with big bouts of procrastination or overthinking? Yeah, and and how do you define [clears throat] it because I almost think that would say there's two distraction and procrastination are related and different.

Procrastination is not a good one. Distraction can be. Distraction can be helpful. You can use distraction if you hold a question to be solved and don't sit and think and try to solve it, but go do something else and go, you know, take a walk or go for a swim. You'll find that it changes. It changes. And the distraction of when you go for a walk and seeing, "Oh, look at that tree over there. Look at those birds. Oh, wow, that car came kind of close to me." All of those things, that that living in the world, even though it's not um challenging in any real way, it's a distraction that's using some part of your brain.

Some part of your brain is occupied with, "Do I turn left or do I turn right? Oh, look at that thing over there. Oh, is it going to rain?" These other things are happening. That's different than just sitting in a room looking at your laptop. Just those outside cues can give you a way into solve a problem that you wouldn't solve if you were sitting and working on it. For example, if we were now doing this podcast together on a walk, it would be a very different podcast than us sitting here staring into each other's eyes.

And it's a beautiful idea. I've I've had There was a period of time where where I lost a whole bunch of weight. And one of the things that I did as part of that was I only did walking meetings. Before I used to only do lunch meetings. So, I switched the lunch meetings to walking meetings. And I would meet people in Santa Monica and we would walk. And the meetings were so much better than the meetings either in a restaurant or at uh in an office.

Everything shifted. Just because we were moving, we were doing something, there were external stimuli, even though the external stimuli had nothing to do with what we were doing. Yeah. It It changed It was a change in context that really did um make the conversation much more interesting. And there's also something about when you're walking, you're not looking at each other. So, it's easier to go into your own thoughts when you're not looking at someone. Mhm. So, it's very interesting, a great experiment, lost a lot of weight, and and the meetings were the best they've ever been.

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. There's a lot of work in couple psychology that suggests that when couples argue, they're usually sitting on opposite sides of a dining table. And when you're sitting with something in between you, first of all, I mean, here we don't have anything, but you have something in between you, it's already creating a distance. And now you're working against each other, rather than what you're saying is you're walking with each other, and you're looking off into the same direction. So, you're almost creating a future.

Uh the idea that you're forward your your future forward, your future facing. It's funny, my my wife and I whenever we get to a new table and we're sitting to to eat, we always say, we look at where the chairs are and one of us will say, "Cheek to cheek." And we tend to sit next to each other instead of across from you. There you go. There you Yeah, cheek to cheek. I love that. And and that makes so much sense with leadership meetings, creative meetings.

And and I I love that I love love love, and this is why this book is so beautiful cuz it has so many really subtle points in the idea of the difference between distraction and procrastination. Yes. And how distraction can actually be healthy. And especially as you said, when you hold a question or you you hold an idea and you're just kind of toying with it, but you might pick up a book, you might go for a walk, you might whatever. You can do all these things, but it's almost like you're using that time wisely to to come back and Absolutely.

Going for a drive is a great one. Yeah. And just the just paying attention to not crashing even though we can drive essentially on autopilot. Yeah. We're not thinking about driving. What once we've been driving for a while. Yeah. But just driving ideas come. I know many musicians, uh singers who will listen to the instrumental music in a car in the car and then sing along when they're driving. Yeah. Because they're more free than when they're sitting with a recorder. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That makes perfect sense.

Yeah, no and it's it's so interesting how we have so many we've also built up again going back to our conditioned beliefs. We've built up a negative relationship with the word distraction. We've built up a negative connotation around if I don't solve it right now sitting in this one place, then I'm never going to figure it out. Yeah. And the idea that actually going on a walk, picking up something else. That's that's one of the reasons why I like having in my office, here in the studio, back in my home.

Everything's quite minimalist, but I have a lot of like little artifacts and little things and because I enjoy the kind of like stimulation and the creative juices that start flowing if I get a moment to just observe. And then sometimes I just want to observe nature outside where I can just sit and bask and almost bathe in nature, which I find to be so useful because there was this incredible study from MIT a few years ago where they tried to look for who were their most creative innovative employees inside the organize inside corporate organizations and MIT was doing the study.

They found two sets of charts of types of employees, employee A and employee B. Employee A knew lots of people that knew each other and employee B knew lots of people that didn't know each other. And they were looking at which one's more creative, innovative, and hence more imaginative inside a company. And they found it was employee B because employee A knew people who knew them back. Small circle, closed circle. closed circles that created these echo chambers and you asked the same 10 people for advice and employee B knew lots of random people who had no connection to each other and the point was being made that if your circle and that I think applies to environment as much as it applies to people Absolutely.

is more random and disconnected, you have more chance of having a original, authentic thought, idea, spark as opposed to you're surrounded by the four same people and you talk about the same things. Absolutely. And and that to me is always been how what what I'm trying to do. It's like I want to know what the monks think and I want to know what Silicon Valley thinks and I want to know what music geniuses think because that's there's something there. Absolutely. A word you use in this book that I want to touch on and that's why this came up for me was submerge and I loved it when I saw that word.

I was just like yes, like I love that I I've thought about that for so long, submerging yourself. We've we've lost that ability to submerge. We don't submerge ourselves much because we have so much of a little. How have you in this hyper-connected world working with the most connected artists in the world, have you encouraged yourself and others to continue to submerge when everyone's asking us to swim shallow? I think so many of the great artists do it naturally. Can't you can't help it. It's the obsessive nature of being really into something that um once you start down a a thread you just keep pulling forever.

If you're interested, many of the artists that that that are great at what they do for that very reason. They fall in love with this thing and then they just want to know everything they could possibly learn about it. Um and there are no distractions. I'm working on a project now, a documentary project with comedians and one of the things that they talk about is their commitment, like when other people are doing things on the weekend, going out with their friends, they're going to perform every, you know, every night that they can possibly go out and perform until they can get good at their craft.

And this could be for a period of, you know, 10 years of just having bad performances, you know, having people not like what you do. Like banging your head against the wall, but that obsession with breaking through. And when I say breaking through, I don't mean breaking through to the audience, I mean breaking through with themselves to where they get past all of the uh blocks and to be free in this moment in a way where they can really express their views and be heard and people can react.

Your purpose in life isn't related to your job. Maybe your job is your job and the job is the thing that supports you. And then the rest of your waking hours are devoted to your purpose, whatever that is. Yeah, and a lot of us are trying to make it the same thing. Yeah, and and it's beautiful when it happens, but it doesn't always happen and it's out of our control, also. We can decide I would say if you need to have a job to support yourself, that's great.

That's a noble thing to do. And follow your dreams. But I'm I'm not saying they're one thing. They don't have to be one thing. And don't let following your dreams undermine your ability Mhm. Mhm. Yeah, and and that's so true that I think the scarcity ruins the art, right? It's the abundance of I did my day job, I'm now safe and secure, I can be artistic. Yes. As opposed to sometimes I actually I'm going to debate my own statement there cuz sometimes it also feels like the pain is the pain of trying to do something is is what creates good art as well.

But yeah, I mean I'm I'm But but you're it could be either There's pain in it anyway. There's pain anyway. Yeah, there's pain in you know, getting up in front of people and them not laughing is painful. Yeah, yeah, there's pain in it anyway. Yeah, there's pain in it anyway. If that means you also can eat, I don't know if that makes it less more or less painful. Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's almost like giving ourselves permission to make art. Like I feel like there's a moment where you go, now I'm worthy almost.

But what you're saying is you were always worthy because it's who you are. Yes, you're always worthy as who you are. Yeah. Why do you think we don't feel worthy of anything, not just making art, but so many of us I think feel a sense of like we're not worthy to do what we love. We're not worthy to share our purpose or our passion. There's a sense of we don't want to give ourselves I think there's a mythology that the people who make things that we love are special people.

And that we think that they're, you know, the people on Mount Olympus and they're these magic people who are geniuses and then there's the rest of us. And that's not the case. It's like we're all just people. We're all doing our best. We all are good at some things, not good at other things. We're humans and sometimes we find a way to make something beautiful. Mhm. But that's it. It's it's Do you know what I mean? There's no There are no special people, really. We're all special.

Yeah. You talk about this idea of larger intelligence and and tapping into and even making almost journaling about dreams which I found was something that I'm definitely going to practically take on. So, I've never journaled about dreams. I know I dream and there's times when I forget and there's times when I remember and sometimes I'll tell some of sometimes I won't and I I when I read you say that you actually wrote about dreams and journaled about dreams, I was like, all right, I'm going to start doing that now.

So, that's something you've directly impacted me to do as a practical thing because I feel like I've had fascinating dreams in the past, I've forgotten, I've It's It's too messy. And they go very quickly. So quickly, so quickly. And that's when I was reading that part, I was like, okay, I need to hold on to these. So, some of the tricks I I Yes. talk to some degree in the book, but not so I just touch on it in the book. There's so much to talk about.

Um but when you wake up, you don't move at all because the the way the dream works, it's a chemical reaction in your brain. So, it's also good to know if you wake up from a scary dream and you don't want to think about it, if you just shake your head around, it'll be gone. So, you keep pen paper right next to your bed and the minute you wake up you grab the pen and paper moving as little as possible and just start writing. And even if you only remember I remember there's a part in the dream where this happens, write the part you remember and you'll see through the process of writing more of the dream will appear.

It's you don't even when you wake up, you don't you won't remember as much of it as you know, but once you start writing, you can start tapping into more. Oh, and before that, this happened. And then this happened after that. And you'll start noticing more details. And the more you practice it, the better you get at it. Mhm. So, I did that for a period of time. And at the time, the dreams made no sense. They were just these abstract, you know, Salvador Dali paintings.

Oh. And yeah. And just went on abstract, I've no idea, strange, strange dreams, no idea what they are. And then years later, I found that journal. And and I read it. And when they were happening, I thought every dream every night was completely different. And none of them were about anything I understood. And years later, when I looked back at it, all the dreams were about the same thing. And they all were It was so clear what my subconscious was telling me. Uh I don't remember what it was, cuz it was probably 20 20 some odd years ago.

But I remember being shocked by oh, this didn't make I was too close to it to understand it. I was too close. And with a little bit of distance, you can see what it is. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also interesting to see how your subconscious works. How it how your subconscious abstracts reality to show it to us in a way that's intriguing and interesting, but not obvious. It's very beautiful. Mhm. The reason why I love that so much is I even had to retract the immediate question that came into my mind.

And I retracted it because And I'll tell everyone what it is, but I retracted it because I just love the act of observing and being present with your dream as as you're showing us how to do. And the modern-day question is, well, what's the benefit of that? Like, why why would you do that? And and when I was asking in my head, I was like if I just listen to you and I'm listening to you and I'm remember reading what I read and I'm thinking the benefit is just the act of observing and just being there and and and being and then like you said, being able to then look back potentially and potentially in the future, maybe not, maybe it is to see if there are connections.

And the subconscious, you're so right, is is speaking to us in almost such a compassionate, artful way Yes. without telling you on the nose, but It's an important point. Don't do things just because you think you're going to get something for it. That's not why we do things. Do what's interesting to you. Follow what's interesting. Don't worry about the outcome.

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