Theatre of the Mind Podcast Episodes

Announcer: Theatre of the Mind Podcast, brought to you by brainsync.com. CDs and MP3 downloads for peak performance at brainsync.com. Expand your knowledge of the bodymind connection and learn how to tap the other 90% of your unused potential.


And now, your host, Kelly Howell.
Kelly Howell: Hey, everybody. Today, we're going to get a little culture, creativity and genius. We have a very special guest. His name is Michael Gelb and he is the author of numerous books on how to cultivate creativity and genius.


His most recent book, "Da Vinci Decoded," explores the seven essential principles by which Leonardo da Vinci lived. And in a moment, Michael will share with us these principles and how to apply them to everyday life.


Hi, Michael, welcome to the show.
Michael Gelb: Thank you. It's great to be here.
Kelly: You've been a da Vinci scholar for many years. What originally inspired you to get on this path?
Michael: I didn't want to have a real job. [laughter]
Kelly: That's a really good reason.
Michael: People say, "What's your background?" And I say, "I'm a professor at MSU." And they say, "Michigan State?" And I say, "No, Make Stuff Up." [laughter]


Early on I was fascinated by creativity. Leonardo was one of my heroes. In 1978 I got invited to speak at a corporate conference in Switzerland for Digital Equipment Corporation vicepresidents. They were looking at how to create a culture that would allow them to compete in the justborn "information age." And they were interested in learning how to think more creatively.


I'd been studying and researching creativity, and I got invited to speak to them. They liked what I said, so they invited me to all their conferences around the world. All of the sudden, I was traveling the world, working with... I started with Digital, and then I worked with IBM and DuPont, and all sorts of organizations who were looking to apply creative thinking in very practical, challenging, stressful situations.


So, I just got launched as a creativity consultant.
Kelly: Wait, now, were you a juggler then too?
Michael: Yes. I had developed an approach to using juggling as a way to teach people how to learn anything they wanted to learn as well as they could.
Kelly: Oh, I want to learn that.
Michael: Yeah. Well, it's all about letting the ball drop and not trying too hard to catch it, and not grasping for results prematurely. Keeping your eyes soft, seeing the big picture, maintaining a spirit of childlike play an openness having fun, creating a cooperative learning environment.
Kelly: So, all your metaphors for creativity well, your main metaphor for creativity has come from juggling too.
Michael: Well, juggling, Leonardo, Aikido, wine and food. I use all kinds of metaphors. Chess: I wrote a book called "Samurai Chess: Mastering Strategy Through the Martial Art of the Mind."
Kelly: I saw that.
Michael: So, all these different metaphors are just a way in to connect to people about universal principles for accessing your creative thinking ability, for accelerating your learning.
Kelly: So, are these the same principles that are in "Da Vinci Decoded'?
Michael: Well, "Da Vinci Decoded" actually followed publication of "How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci," which came out in 1998, which set forth the seven principles for thinking like Leonardo. And then, in "Da Vinci Decoded," I responded to my readers' requests to explore the application of those seven da Vinci principles to spiritual development.


So "Da Vinci Decoded" takes the seven principles and focuses on their application to spiritual understanding, whereas "How to Think Like Leonardo" focuses primarily on developing your creative thinking ability and your learning skill.
Kelly: Just to let everybody in on this, what are the seven da Vincian principles?
Michael: Well, you're applying the first one, and so is anybody who is following our conversation.


The first principle is "curiosita." Of course, it means curiosity. Leonardo was probably the most curious person who ever lived. He was so curious, he wouldn't take yes for an answer. [laughter]


The second principle: "dimonstrazione." Demonstration, test things for yourself in your own experience. Leonardo said, "You must become an 'inventore'" an original thinker. Think for yourself; learn from your mistakes, of course. That's how you get experience.


And you have to remember, he came along after 1,000 years in the Middle Ages when no one really questioned anything. And he questioned everything. He's one of the great patron saints of independent thinking, along with Socrates.


The third principle: "sensazione." Of course, it means sensation.
Kelly: I need to brush up on my Italian here.
Michael: Sharpen your senses. Leonardo said, "The five senses are the ministers of the soul." And he trained his own sensory awareness like an Olympic athlete trains their body for competition. 500 years ago in Tuscany, Leonard wrote: "The average person looks without seeing, hears without listening, touches without feeling, breathes in without awareness of aroma or fragrance, eats without tasting, and talks without thinking."


The fourth principle: "sfumato." It's actually a term that art critics coined to refer to the hazy, mysterious quality in Leonardo's paintings. What it really represents is maybe the most distinguishing characteristic of highly creative people, which is their openness to embrace the unknown.


The fifth principle: "arte e scienza." Balance art and science, logic and imagination. In modern terms we'd say, "Use your whole brain." Leonardo was a genius as both an artist and a scientist, and he advised his students: "Study the science of art and the art of science."
Kelly: That's beautiful.
Michael: The sixth principle: "corporalita." Balance the body and the mind.


In addition to being a genius as an artist and a scientist, Leonardo was also physically gifted. He was renowned for his strength, for his poise, his skill as an athlete, as a horseman, as a fencer. History even records that he was a juggler.
Kelly: Really?
Michael: Amazingly so.
Kelly: Did you know that when you got into juggling?
Michael: I did, actually. I read about it in a Leonardo biography by Antonin Valentin. Think about Leonardo's "Canon of Proportion" figure the figure in the squared circle. It's used all over the world as a symbol of wholeness, of wellness, of health. He had profound insights into the secrets of wholeness, wellness, health, both in terms of our physical manifestation and our spiritual lives.


The Seventh Principle brings it all together. The Seventh Principle: "connezione." Everything connects to everything else.


So, you know the famous systems thinking question asked by a meteorologist named Lorenz in 1911: "If a butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo, does it affect the weather in New York?" Well, hundreds of years before that, Leonardo wrote in his notebook, "When a tiny bird alights on the smallest branch of a tree, the whole world is effected."


The modern answer to Lorenz's question is "yes. The butterfly flapping its wings does effect everything, and everything connects to everything else."
Kelly: If we could just remember that every day with what we're doing.
Michael: Amen. Amen.
Kelly: So, how do we apply them? I know you write a lot about it in your book, but people haven't read the book.
Michael: Sure. I can absolutely give people some clues, because I still earn my living by working with companies. 28 years later, I'm working for Fortune 500 companies all over the world, helping them to be more creative and build cultures of innovation.


You can't just talk theoretically about art history and the development of consciousness. You have to give people practical things that they could do differently, where they experience results of generating more ideas in less time, making better connections, being more creative, being more innovative, solving real life, practical problems.


Here's something very simple and tangible that people can start doing right away to think more like Leonardo. It's to do what he did, and that is to keep a notebook or a journal.
Kelly: I read that in your book and that was one of my questions to ask you.
Michael: [laughs] Ah ha! Did you write that down in your notebook, that question?
Kelly: No, but I've always kept a spiritual notebook, and I wanted you to talk about that.
Michael: I had a feeling that you did.


Well, Leonardo's famous for his notebooks. We have about 6,000 pages, and it's estimated that those are only half of what he created.
Kelly: I wish my notebooks were as interesting as his. [laughs]
Michael: Well, even better: I bet you wish, as I do, that Bill Gates would pay $30.8 million for 18 pages of your notebooks, like he did for 18 pages of Leonardo's notebooks, in 1994.
Kelly: Wow.
Michael: Pretty stunning.


For years, scholars criticized Leonardo because his notebooks aren't organized in standard formats. There's no Table of Contents, there's no Index.
Kelly: It's very inconvenient for these historians.
Michael: Sorry, scholars.


[laughter]
Michael: You look at the pages of Leonardo's notebooks, and you see notes on the flight of a bird or the flow of water on the same page with a shopping list, some jokes, and definitions of vocabulary words. Scholars said, "This guy's mind is all over the place."


Exactly. It's the mind that is free that makes new connections, that can move freely from one subject to another, and then make unconventional connections. Everybody talks about "thinking out of the box," but first, you have to know what the box is. It's linear thinking. It's having to follow the outline.


Leonardo went outside the box, outside the outline, to really change human consciousness.
Kelly: Which is the essence of creativity.
Michael: To give birth to what we now call creative thinking.


The first western reference to what we now call creative thinking is Leonardo's notebooks, where he advises his students to let their minds go free and think of thousands of things, in response to looking at abstract patterns he says you will see in these divine landscapes.


Then he adds, "...which you may reduce to their complete and proper forms." What he's saying is, "Let your mind go free. Generate lots of ideas. Think of all sorts of possibilities even if they seem crazy. Then organize them." That's the essence of how to balance creative thinking with critical thinking.
Kelly: Which is balancing left brain/right brain, that whole concept there.
Michael: Which is balancing left and right. Here it is articulated, specifically as advice to his students, in Leonardo's notebooks.


In the Middle Ages in Europe, nobody ever said, "Let your mind go free. Think of a thousand things." It didn't happen.


[laughter]
Michael: So it's a revolution in human thought. It's the simplest, most powerful way to unleash your creative potential. The way I say it to my corporate clients is that I tell them... I was working with a big pharmaceutical company a couple of weeks ago. I said, "I have a diagnosis for this group. You suffer from premature organization." [laughs]
Kelly: It's true. It's true; it's oppressive.
Michael: Premature organization prevents conception. It's like the writer's motto: "Write drunk, revise sober." Generate first, then organize. If you organize first, you never generate anything, so no creativity happens.


Generate first, then organize. Then generate again, then organize. It's like breathing. It's the yin and yang. It's the ebb and flow of consciousness and creativity.
Kelly: What would be another application?
Michael: We'll go in order. Just to be wild.
Kelly: Just to be organized. [laughs]
Michael: [laughs] Just to be organized. Or I'm happy to just give a round, if you like.


If we went to the second principle, "dimonstrazione" on page 50 of "How to Think Like Leonardo," there is a reproduction of Leonardo's drawings of a flower. It's incredibly beautiful. Each one is magic, magic, magic.


I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition of Leonardo drawings a few years ago. To see them live, real... it's like if God could draw, this is what it would look like.


But you notice that Leonardo drew it from three different perspectives, and he also did his dissections from three different angles. His sketches for a face he was going to paint were always done from at least three different angles, and in his notebooks, he specifically advises his students, "If you want to say that you have really thought something through, you must look at it from at least three perspectives."


He says, "For example, if I am attempting to analyze one of my own paintings, I have trouble because I'm subjective." This is thinking about thinking, about consciousness. It's amazing. This was 500 years ago and he's coaching his students. He says, "Step back from it, so that you can literally look at it from a distance."


He says, "Then look at your work reflected in the mirror, so that you can imagine that it is the work of another. Then sleep on it, come back the next day. Ask someone you respect to critique it and listen with an open mind. Only then, can you say that you've really thought about it."
Kelly: So the third principle?
Michael: Sensazione.
Kelly: Sensation?
Michael: Right, and here's where we get to have lots of fun. Because sensazione is critical to businesses. You have to be sharp in what you do. It's a sensory term. The opposite is dull. But it's also the secret of enjoying life. "La dolce vita." The sweet and soulful life is about savoring the senses in the moment.


The French have "joie de vivre," the joy of life. So in Italy they have "la dolce vita," in France they have "joie de vivre." What do we have here in the states? Happy hour?


[laughter]
Kelly: Happy hour, oh dear.
Michael: Miller Time?
Kelly: Monday Night Football.
Michael: I've observed that my friends in Italy have a greater appreciation of history, and they're way better at being in the present moment, especially around lunchtime. The pasta comes out, fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, a little pecorino cheese, a beautiful glass of wine, perfect light, some white butterflies dancing in a field of lavender, rolling vineyards, maybe some olive groves...
Kelly: I'm booking my ticket now.


[laughter]
Kelly: Where do we sign up?
Michael: The great thing is you can bring that to your life every day. I have recipes in the da Vinci workbook that goes with the original book. I put in fifteen of my recipes inspired by my Italian grandmother.
Kelly: You are a great chef.
Michael: Thank you. Grazie. It's just following these universal principles. The advice on Italian philosophy of cooking is find the best ingredients and don't mess them up.


But part of the point of all of this is to encourage people to be global renaissance men and women, and to cultivate an appreciation of history and the cultures of the world, to be engaged in making a better future, for yourself, your family, your community, your country, your planet. Wow. Savoring every single moment of existence.


This is where the exercises in the sensazione chapter get really fun. Because they're all about comparative appreciation. We tend to focus more and remember better when we compare one thing with another. So this is good news, it means that instead of having just a piece of Belgian chocolate, have a piece of Mexican chocolate and maybe some French chocolate as well, and compare and contrast them in a nonjudgmental framework.


It's not about good or bad, it's about "what does this one remind you of, and what does this one evoke." Go to the level of the purity of your experience in that moment; expose yourself to beauty in all forms. You may be more moved by music or opera, by Theatre or painting. Look for beauty in all its various forms and to become a student of beauty.
Kelly: Oh, I like that. So Michael, what's the next principle?
Michael: "Sfumato." For sfumato I'll take you into the realm of "Da Vinci Decoded" and the more spiritual application. Because sfumato, the spiritual underpinning is to go into and understand your own shadow, your own darkness. Leonardo was a genius at expressing shadow on the canvas. He's the first to really document what is shadow and how to we create it.


But it's more than just an art technique. He expresses in his paintings a phenomenal tension between light and dark, which can't help but remind us of the tension in ourselves between our conscious and our unconsciousness, between our aspirations to goodness and our tendencies to anger and spite and fear which, when they are not acknowledged and embraced and given an opportunity for creative expression, get acted out.


They become all sorts of unpleasantness. This is the critical missing link in the spiritual quest, because just about everywhere you go for socalled spiritual teaching, the emphasis is on...
Kelly: The light.
Michael: The light, and the goodness, and saving the whales, and all that stuff. People really don't want to talk about or even acknowledge their own violence.


People love to criticize the administration at the moment, for example. That's one level of discourse. But so much energy goes into projecting the shadow on these other people. It's like, "hey, take a look inside yourself instead." Give me a break. I'm tired of hearing about it. The more darkness you see out there... well, do something useful and send light in that direction, not more projection of your own darkness and anger.


But coming back to Leonardo, you see in his art, in all his work really, this tension and this pointing. He literally points. He has characters, angels who point. If you watch, what are they pointing at? A lot of times they're pointing to this mystery. They're pointing to this darkness.


The last painting Leonardo did, which is the symbol of sfumato in "Da Vinci Decoded" is Saint John, and he's pointing to heaven. But he's pointing to heaven in the most mysterious way, across his body. He's naked except for a bear skin. He's got a look on his face that might be described as salacious. You can't tell, he's androgynous. He's emerging out of this incredible darkness, but he's also moving towards this phenomenal haunting light.


It is one of the most mysterious paintings ever created. He looks like a giant question mark. One of the questions is have you embraced and engaged your own shadow, your own darkness, in your quest for the light?


Number five, "arte e scienza," balance art and science. In "How To Think Like Leonardo," I introduce one of the simplest, most powerful things people can do to think like Leonardo Da Vinci and balance art and science, logic and imagination. Use your whole brain by practicing mind mapping.
Kelly: I saw that you wrote a book on that too, didn't you?
Michael: An audio program.
Kelly: Oh, it's an audio program.
Michael: But there's full instructions on how to mindmap and how to think like Leonardo da Vinci. Mindmapping was originated by my good buddy Tony Buzan.
Kelly: Tony Buzan.
Michael: And Tony will tell you that he was inspired by reading the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci when he first created mindmapping.


Mindmapping trains you to generate lots of ideas, to let your mind go free, to see divine landscapes, and then reduce them to complete and proper forms. And it's an immediately applicable, practical way to solve business problems, to plan your next presentation, plan your vacation to Italy. Whatever you're working on it's... And I get people doing it in the course of an afternoon, and they get results right away.


I've been doing this for a long time, and I have letters from people all over the world about kids whose grades went way up in school. School became easy for them. Teachers applying it in terms of both organizing their curriculum and designing their lesson plans. My corporate clients who write their vision/mission/value statements and strategic plans using mindmapping.


It's just a real wonderful, practical tool.
Kelly: So, that's the fifth principle. And what's the next one?
Michael: The sixth principle is "corporalita," balance your body and your mind. So, there's all kinds of practical suggestions and paths for it in this chapter, many of them originating directly from Leonardo's own writings about health and wellness.


But one of the things that was outstanding about Leonardo also Michelangelo was their ambidexterity. Leonardo could write and paint and draw with both hands. So could Michelangelo. They cultivated it.
Kelly: Interesting, I didn't know that.
Michael: Well, two years ago, Professor Arnie May, from Regensburg University in Germany, published the results of his study in "Nature," the scientific journal. That students who juggled for 15 minutes a day adults, and this is over the course of three months showed significant improvements in the neural circuitry between the two hemispheres of their brain.
Kelly: Wow. From juggling.
Michael: From juggling. And we know that Leonardo was a juggler.
Kelly: OK, you're teaching me juggling.
Michael: You got it. [laughter]
Kelly: I'll be juggling in the recording studio.
Michael: I've taught thousands of people around the world. I'll be delighted to teach you.
Kelly: So, what's the next one now? Are we on number seven?
Michael: Number seven.
Kelly: So, OK, how do we apply number seven?
Michael: "Connezione," everything connects to everything else.
Kelly: Connection.
Michael: Again, there's a whole range of different explorations, different exercises in the chapters in both "How to Think Like Leonardo" and "Da Vinci Decoded." But the one that I strongly recommend that people explore is called "How to Make a Master MindMap of Your Life."


And I guide people stepbystep to look at, first, their purpose, their values, then their goals in every area of their life. And then to look at how do their goals reflect their purpose and their values. How do they all fit together? A lot of times people have great goals, but they make them without reference to one another.
Kelly: Right. Or there's and incongruence between what someone is doing and what their goals are or what they want to do.
Michael: As a matter of fact, there always is. It's part of being incarnated.
Kelly: Right.
Michael: The question is to discover the gaps between your highest ideals and your everyday reality, so that you can make even the slightest little conscious incremental improvement, so that what you're doing everyday matches more...
Kelly: What you want.
Michael: What you want. And that's "connezione." That's the connezione that gives life a sense of meaning and fulfillment, when you're moving in the direction of your highest ideal and aspirations. Versus when you don't even know what they are, or you're just drifting along, or you're caught up in habit or the lowest common denominator, or the demands of the marketplace. And time's just whooshing by because you're caught up with so many different, competing demands on your attention.
Kelly: It's so important to have those states of wholeness. I think of it as wholeness. Where it doesn't matter you could be out walking your dog, or walking yourself, and you just feel at one. With yourself, and with your environment.


And to have as many of those moments in a day.
Michael: But, see, that's the beauty, when you understand that. Leonardo said, "Fix your course to a star. And the shining star which is inside all of us is that realization, that enlightenment is actually accessible any moment that we choose it.


That "Gee, why do you want to have a successful career? Why do you want to have a great relationship? Why do you want to travel the world? Why do you want to learn all this stuff?" Because you want to feel wonderful, you want to feel loved, you want to feel connected to something greater than you, you want praise or adulation or recognition. Because then you'll feel like, "Now, I belong."


That's why we want health and wellness. I feel more integral, more connected to something greater than myself. But you can choose to have that any single moment. So, that's a pretty cool thing to remember. [laughter]
Kelly: That's a great thing to remember. Oh, Michael, thank you so much for coming here and taking the time to talk to us.
Michael: Grazie mille.
Kelly: Now, you have a website.
Michael: Yes. It's www.michaelgelb.com.


[music]
Announcer: You have been listening to Theatre of the Mind podcast, accelerating the evolution of human consciousness. Visit Theatre of the Mind online at www.kellyhowell.com. Leave comments, questions and feedback and join the conversation about consciousness. We want to know what you're thinking. Or you can call Kelly. The phone number is 2063398686.


Theatre of the Mind Podcast is brought to you by brainsync.com. CDs and MP3 downloads for peak performance. Find them at www.brainsync.com.