Episode 83
Michael Lee, Innotivity Institute
Michael Lee, a South African creativity trainer, coach, and author.
He is also a Silicon Valley advisor, a TV screenwriter, and a film producer who has worked in Prague, Nigeria & South Africa.
His training is called "innotivity" (creativity and Innovation)
Michael believes that creativity is a trait that we are all inherently born with.
- The best way to start being creative is to go ahead and just be creative. Creativity is a muscle that has to be exercised so as to get it going. A simple way to practice is freewriting.
- Creativity is the process of confronting the problem and then solving the problem.in order to do that, you have to first think about the problem that's creativity, and then you have to take action that's innovation.
Visit his website: www.innotidityinstitute.com.
And read a rough transcript of our entire interview attached here.
Transcript
Hello again, everyone. This is Mark Stinson, and you've joined us on unlocking your world of creativity. This is the podcast where we go around the world, talking with creative experts about their inspiration, where they get their ideas, but also tools and techniques to organize those ideas. And then most of all, how they gain the confidence and the connections to get their work out into the world. And it's my real pleasure today to travel to Johannesburg South Africa. And we're talking with Michael Lee, Michael, welcome to the program.
Michael Lee (:Thank you very much, Mark, really grateful for you having me on here. It's really a pleasure.
Mark (:It's great to talk to you. Michael is a real, a triple threat when it comes to creativity, you know, he can help teach you a lot of the principles of creativity. He's got a master and certification program is also a thought leader, but he's also advising companies, especially in Silicon Valley, but also he's involved in the TV and film industry in the States also in South Africa is, you know really thorn to foundation for a film and TV people there. And so we're going to get into all of that, but most of all, he's the senior vice president and strategy director of innovative minds. And he's the master of creativity and innovation coaching for something called the Innotivity Institute. And Michael, maybe that's a good place to start. Tell us about Innotivity. I love the word.
Michael Lee (:Thank you. It's a word that I, it's a word that I struggled with for a while because some people can't say it, you say it perfectly so
Mark (:Well. I practiced for the last day and a half
Michael Lee (:It shows. So it's a really simple actually in Innotivity is obviously creativity and innovation in one word. And in, in developing my training, you know, one of the things that was really clear to me is that the worlds of creativity and innovation are very separate in reality. Not because they need to be, but just because it's how we see things and you know, anybody who knows anything about coaching, you know, or especially NLP will know about the idea of a meta-programs, and a meta- program is basically a personality trait in a way. So for example, you will have a meta-program that dictates whether you're a big chunker or a small chunker In other words, you like to talk a lot about details, or you like to say, like, how was your day at work? It was good, right?
Michael Lee (:And then you have the people that like to say everything that happened to them. So that's a personality trait and in a way, I've realized that creativity and innovation for a lot of people it's like that, like either you're creative and, you know, people think of that as like art, right? Like whether it's film or painting or whatever, they think that that's creative and then there's innovation, which people think of as somehow technology or science, right. Or at best business. But the thing is that that really they're just two parts of a process. And that process is the process of confronting the problem and then solving the problem. Right. And in order to do that, you have to first think about the problem that's creativity, and then you have to take action that's innovation. Right? So inactivity is really just a word designed to get people to understand that the bottom line is that they're the same thing. One involves thinking and one involves acting. And if you're good at one, you can very easily be good at the other
Mark (:Well, that is my question. I mean, do you see it more as a continuum or do you see it as sort of stage one stage two,
Michael Lee (:Both actually. So it, you know, in reality, you have to think before you act, right, you have to come up with ideas before you can implement the idea. And, you know, famously Thomas Edison said he did 10,000 experiments to come up with a workable light bulb. He also said, and this is one of the most important things. I think any of those quotes that everybody knows probably one of the best quotes of all time is that he didn't fail 10,000 times. He succeeded 10,000 times in finding the wrong light bulb. Right. And I mean, personally, I've used that a lot in my personal relationship with my girlfriend or whatever. It's like, you know, we're not failing. It's just, we've just discovered how not to do something. Right. So every time you, so it's, it is, it is two parts of the process, but it's not like when you get to the innovation step that you're suddenly done.
Michael Lee (:Right. You have to then usually go back and think again. So, it is a continuum because you're always rethinking the implementation, right? So it really is the same thought process. It really is when you're innovating, you're, you're, you're engaged with the same part of your brain that you're engaged with when you're creating, there's no difference between those two things, but we have convinced ourselves as a society and a culture that, that they're very different. So inactivity is, is really just a word that's designed to get people to get that they are the same thing.
Mark (:I love that. And I guess from the standpoint we'll talk business and personal, but from the business standpoint, I guess this idea of blending creativity and innovation has got to make the innovation process more productive, more efficient, more prolific, I guess. Would that be the case?
Michael Lee (:Absolutely. I mean, you know, design thinking, I have many reservations about it, but people, you know, it, it generally works and people love it, you know? Cause it's an easy process for them to learn. It has become really popular and it's changed the way people think about innovating because it begins with, you know, looking at the end before you start, right. It begins with what is the customer going to experience. What are the customer's concerns? And so by doing that, it immediately takes you far into the future from just like brainstorming something out of nowhere . Right? So by thinking about what the innovation is while you're being creative and by thinking about your creative thinking while you're implementing absolutely enriches the process because basically like the separation between thought and action while, while you know, not necessarily right. I mean, you simply can't take an action until you've thought of the action. You can't just, even if you don't know it. Right. But, but as you build a skill in being able to kind of integrate them, you know, there's, there's no other way to think of that, but enriching
Mark (:It's so true. And I guess to the, to the point that you said, you know, a lot of people say, Oh, I'm not that creative. I'm more on the business side of the implementation side, you know, is creativity a muscle that we can build, you know, a skill that we can acquire because geez, I, I look at every job posting on LinkedIn and it says, I need a creative individual, you know? So I'd hate to be that person who says I'm not that creative.
Michael Lee (:Well, do you want the good news or the bad news first?
Mark (:The good news.
Michael Lee (:Okay. So the good news is every single human being is born creative and equally creative, right? If not, you would Mark or any of us would be sitting here today, still sitting on the floor. If you imagine this, imagine putting your brain right now, back into a one-year-old what yourself as a one-year-old child. And you know, if you did that, you'd never learned to walk because after you tried five or six times, you'd be like, this is not something I'm good at, right. I, I just, I don't know how to do this, but then you'd be looking around you and going like, look at all the other babies. they're good at this. Right. They figured it out. And that's the way we, most of us think, right. Is that, is that like, you know, we're just not that good at it. But the fact is that studies have been done that show that almost every single five-year-old child is a creative genius.
Michael Lee (:And the same studies I'm talking about very famous study found that by age 10, the same exact children, 70% of them had lost that level of creativity 70%, right? By the time they reach adulthood, the level of creative genius is 2%. So, the good news is everybody's born as a creative genius that you have to be. It's how we learn to do things. The bad news is 98% of adults have lost that. So I like to flip what you said on his head. I don't think creativity is a muscle you learn to build creativity is it's, it's a muscle you have, you never needed to build.
Michael Lee (:And now you need to like, get all the junk out of the way that, you know, the muscles, I guess, a bad metaphor way. Cause it's, I don't know where to go with that metaphor, but, but, but basically it's like, I don’t know, it's like you don't have to build the house. You have to clean the junk out of the house. The house was there, you were born with a house, you have the birthright, what are the human things we get? You know, when we're born is creativity and, and, and we've all decided along the way for various reasons that it's safer to get rid of it.
Mark (:Interesting. And I guess from the standpoint of, you know, I think we could talk about the business side, but I'm very intrigued by this personal side. And you mentioned relationships, for example, you know, if we apply our creative thinking to our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, you know and health and so forth where, where does that take us?
Michael Lee (:Well, the first thing I want to do right, Mark is, is, is erase this idea that you're introducing that there's like the business and the professional world around this question, because, you know, as we can divide our life into various aspects and, and look at things in that distinction, or, you know, we can actually get that the same creativity we apply. One place is the same. Creativity we apply somewhere else. It's simply where we're applying it. That's different, right? So it's not, it's not that like in your personal life, it's different than you're creative in a different way. You're just simply applying it to a different problem. You know, I think that that's my first best answer to your question is, is like, you know, yeah, sure. It applies in every aspect of your life. You know, if you're in a, if you have a problem, you have to be creative to solve it, or you do it the exact same way you've always done, which probably doesn't work.
Michael Lee (:Right?
Mark (:Yes.
Michael Lee (:You know, and that's, and that's one of the things about creativity that, that is why, you know, so, so let me try to quickly address the, what I said earlier is that, you know, everybody knows that school destroys creativity, right? That's it, Ken Robinson Sir Ken Robinson recently passed away. The highest watched Ted talk of all time is called why schools kill creativity. It has more views than stuff by Oprah or whatever. I guess it's the biggest Ted talk ever done. And everybody knows, you know, most schools do that. A lot of people realize that it's not the school's fault. It's how society built the schools in the first place. It was designed that way. Right. And it was designed that way because society doesn't need creative people. Traditionally society needs people to do stuff, to get stuff done. And most of the time to get stuff done, you want to do it the way you learn to do it.
Michael Lee (:Right. And you know, that makes sense. If you look at an old traditional society, like somebody living in the, you know, people living in a village, they didn't the society. If everybody was creative, it would have been disaster, right? Like people needed to do what they're told to do and, and do it in the way that works. And if you walk into a line, that's one of the stories I like to always tell is one time I walked into a lion in the Bush with a ranger, you know, going through a game walk. And there's only one way to deal with that. It's been proven for however many thousands of years; people have dealt with this. You don't run, right? That's a bad thing. If you run, the lion thinks you're prey and you convince it very easily. And guess what? Even Hussein bolt, can't outrun a lie.
Michael Lee (:Now you could bring a friend with you who knows slower than you, but that's not very nice, right? The way you deal with the line is you stop you back away from it slowly. You keep looking at it in the eyes, but gently without being threatening, you wave your arms around and make noises. So it's a little bit scared of you, but not scared in a way that's going to make it attack you, and you back away until you're far enough away to get away. That's what you do now. Most of life has been like that for most of human history. You just do what you're supposed to do, and that's how you survive. Unfortunately. Or fortunately, over the last century, that's shifted because we become less and less dealing with the real world. And more and more dealing with intelligence knowledge, you know as we are dealing right now with the COVID situation, suddenly like here, you and I are talking, and I don't know what you smell like, or like, you know, if you have pants on, right, right?
Mark (:Right. We're not facing lions like we used to.
Michael Lee (:Right. So, so in doing that, you know, we've gone over time and it's been predicted for many years. It was predicted by Alvin Toffler and the book future shock exactly 51 years ago, that history was speeding up. So fast technology was driving things into the future so fast that people were getting ill, trying to cope with the speed of change. Right. And he said that the biggest change in human history was coming, which is that creativity would become the most important thing in the world because the only way to deal with rapid change is to constantly change. So we've got a society that now actually needs creative people and doesn't have, and we're in this moment of, we are crisis in a way because we haven't figured out how to get people to be creative again, but we need them to be now.
Michael Lee (:So 50 years or a hundred years from now, it probably won't be a big deal. Everybody will be, you know, have retained their creativity from birth. But right now there's the third thing though. I think we're to have to cope with what we haven't dealt with at all, which is school society itself. Right. Which is that the self, human beings, we're pretty comfortable with knowing who we are. Right. In fact, like one of the great things that we like to learn in, in developing ourselves and self-help, and all that is who am I? Right. Let me be firm and bold and know who I am. If you're a leader, you need to know who you are, need to know what you want. You need to know what people must do. And that's all a disaster because you can only have the ideas you would have. Creativity is the ability to think differently from yourself, not the same way every time. Right? So, so, so as long as, as long as we, as human beings are so terrified of, of being flexible about ourselves, I think that's what drives society in school actually. And until that is dealt with, and that's where I really like to focus when I'm doing is dealing with people. You can call it unwillingness or even addiction to themselves, unwillingness to change themselves,
Mark (:Look inside and say, look at all the things that need to change in the world. But what about inside?
Michael Lee (:Yeah. And the ability to say like, cause here's the thing that I like to train people. It's very simple. Pick a problem. Or just about, just give me an example. I know you not have endless hours, but pick a problem you're dealing with right now that you'd like to solve that. You're kind of like, I don't know how to do that.
Mark (:I would say how to well we need some home renovation. Okay. And I'm stuck because I'm not the handyman type and I don't even know where to begin.
Michael Lee (:Okay. And you don't have the budget to just hire everybody.
Mark (:Not just everybody I want. Right. Sorry.
Michael Lee (:Right. So the Mark Stinson who exists right now is not having an idea of how to solve this. But imagine if you could sit down and go, okay, who would I need to be right now to solve? What kind of person would solve this?
Mark (:I see what you mean [inaudible].
Michael Lee (:.........have different ideas.
Mark (:What, what skills or what capabilities would a person need?
Michael Lee (:I don't mean that you're going to learn how to be a carpenter. Right? That's a whole different thing. But I mean like what mindset do you not have right now? Because you have a certain personality. And if I asked you, tell me about Mark and then you can either tell me in three words, or you could go on for 20 minutes, but either way, you're pretty sure about who you are, right?
Mark (:Yes.
Michael Lee (:And I mean, that's normal.
Mark (:It is.
Michael Lee (:That's how we're designed to live. But the future human will be a human who is able to adapt themselves to the best human they need to be for the situation they're facing.
Michael Lee (:And, and that skill is in us. You know, I'm sure Mark, if you think about it, there's not a single way of being you haven't, at some point, at some point you felt like a millionaire, even though you didn't have a million dollars, at some point you were deeply in love, even though some other times, you're, you're, you're not feeling that you know, at some point you felt really capable. Some other point, you didn't write every single approaching things is something you've already experienced in your life. Something, you know, how to do. And yet we're all convinced that we are this rigid set of beings who have a certain way about us and that's it. Right? And we'll learn, go get a Ph.D. You can learn more about one thing and you'll be a little bit better and you'll have a little bit better idea, but the simplest way to increase your ability to be creative is to actually get that. You're not going to have any ideas that are different from the ideas that you would always have the best way to actually shift that. And open up your creativity is to be a five-year-old, Five-year-olds are having no idea who they are and they don't care.
Mark (:That's right. And I love that it takes on this new mindset. And I'll just remind listeners. My guest is Michael Lee. And I think this transformation process that Michael's talking about, you know, here's a trainer, a teacher, a speaker, so he's accredited in this kind of change of mindset. So I'm glad we're getting in this discussion. And he's even written a book called innotivity -- a mind make-over manual. So we're, we're talking about a mind make-over here. Well, Michael, I'm also curious about your own creative journey. You know you didn't just simply come to this, you know, after two steps of the process, let's talk about your own creative development and your own journey through various creative professions and initiatives and projects. How did you get to where you are today?
Michael Lee (:Yeah. Great question. I'm always trying to figure it out how I got to where I am today.
Mark (:Yeah. Go back to go and then let's start the board again. Yeah.
Michael Lee (:So, so I mean to be, to be as concise about it as I can. I have always, you know, I, I was someone who was always felt quite rejected and kind of outside of the, you know, sort of mainstream cliques or groups in school and everything like that. So I was very, I was pretty smart. I was kid and I, I was creative, like all of us were, but I guess when I got out of college where I kind of followed a pretty standard path study political science stuff, I was determined to be a novelist. And I don't know where it came from, but I just wanted to do something different than everybody else, I guess. And I really loved literature, especially in fact hated film. It was very contemptuous of film because, you know, it wasn't as good as literature.
Michael Lee (:Until I spent about five years writing books and then decided I was lonely and decided to get into film and TV because I realized a director on the television or film director doesn't have to have original ideas all the time. They can actually just be good at like taking other people's ideas and making them work. And I think I reached a point of like, my writing was really good, but my ideas weren't, I was too young or didn't, you know, I didn't have the right ideas. And so I was frustrated. So I got into TV and film instead and did a lot of factual documentary reality TV, that kind of stuff. And I did that for a long time. Both in Prague where I was originally, I'd moved to Prague to become the great American novelist kind of thing, I guess, except I considered American.
Michael Lee (:But and then I went back to New York for a while, came to South Africa worked in the film industry along the way everywhere. And I, I basically, yeah, I mean, my shows did pretty well in South Africa, especially as I became more adept and knew what I was doing better. But also along the way, I started teaching a bit kind of happens, especially here. It's a bit different than maybe in the States where you may have a lot more competition here if you're good at something like teaching, you know, like, like making TV shows, eventually, someone's going to ask you to teach a class, right. Because the, I guess the numbers aren't as big and, and it's sort of, everybody knows each other. And then eventually I got asked to, to actually start a TV school about 11 years ago, and I did that.
Michael Lee (:It was just a job, but in that process, and I'm kind of answering your question and going beyond it in that process, I, I thought that you know, for people to learn television, they needed to also, because it was a very technical school and I'm not, you know I know my technology, but I'm not a technologist. And so I thought it was really important to make sure that they have a creativity strand, you know to learn how to be creative. And at first, just used existing textbooks and stuff from, you know, well-known people like say Julia Cameron, and then along the way I was going to Nigeria and making TV shows there and stuff, and I had to quit the school. And then when I came back after one of two very catastrophic events I, I was asked to do the class again and they didn't have time to get the books.
Michael Lee (:So I had to kind of come up with my own system. And that was the beginning of the journey. That's led me here in the sense that I got more and more interested in this idea of how do you teach people to be creative again. And it seemed to be working in the school. So as we didn't bother getting other books anymore, and then I started delivering it to the public. Meanwhile, I, my second catastrophic event in Nigeria was that I was hired to be the head of factual TV for a new TV station in Nigeria. And after six months of very frustrating experiences, they stopped paying people. And I had to come back to South Africa, which I did not expect didn't have any place to live was very depressed and decided to quit factual filmmaking entirely. And after a couple of years of kind of just getting myself centered again, decided to go into fiction filmmaking. So I've been working as a screenwriter and producer of dramatic content since then, but my real focus has really been the past couple of years on the training and coaching and creativity and innovation. So I guess I've kind of answered your question, but
Mark (:Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And I guess, Michael, of course, a journey like that is going to have its obstacles, potholes, and low moments as well. You, you went through some tough times personally and are still, you know, recovering to this day from some addiction. And I would love to know, I guess, how, how you're doing, but also how that has affected your approach in your mindset to creativity.
Michael Lee (:Yeah. That's a great question, Mark. I, I, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm an addict in recovery. I'm heavy marijuana user for a number of years and a lot of people don't think that's a drug, but it is. In fact, as drugs go, it's one of the hardest to recover from because it takes a long time to have it really affect you. And so it takes a long time to have an ineffective, you know, strangely enough, much harder and much more potent drugs are much easier to recover from once you get into recovery, because they don't have the sort of personality effects that are so deep, but I'm doing great. Thanks for asking that I I'm over five years completely clean up all mind-altering substances saying including even alcohol. And I've learned such a huge amount from the recovery process. There's a lot of stuff in the 12 step programs and you know, that really gets into mindset.
Michael Lee (:And, and although, you know, it's not designed that way when Julia Cameron's book, which I think is really fundamental for a lot of people and creativity is designed on a 12-step process because she was an alcoholic or is an alcoholic. And that's where she, I think got a lot of her thinking is, and a lot of thinking that, that I've learned a lot from her is, is that we're all in recovery. If 98% of us have lost one of the most basic human skills because of essentially a lifetime of trauma where we've had a beaten out of us, you know you know, the bad news is all of us are recovering addicts. We're all addicted to ourselves. We're all addicted. This notion that, that we shouldn't be creative, that it, that it's actually somehow bad, you know, that somehow like knowing who we are and being stuck with that is the right thing.
Michael Lee (:That's an addiction. And, you know, people don't necessarily like to hear that, but it's funny. Like I said, I said earlier because people love, I've been taught that the most important thing is to know who you are, your identity be, you know, be proud of who you are, all that stuff. But all of that to me is an addiction. It's an addiction to, to like, you know, being stuck in a specific way. And for me, like it's clear from my own work and seeing people, the road to freedom there is to stop being so attached to like this persona that you happen to become and, you know, be, be able to be that persona when you want to, but also don't be stuck with it. Don't be like, well, that person upset me. No, you know, you are a person that gets upset when people do that stuff. So stop it
Mark (:Addiction to your ego. And too, it sounds like you're saying external reviews, validation, likes, and dislikes, right?
Michael Lee (:Yeah, exactly. And it's like, you know, it, it comes down when we're talking about creativity to that. It's like, when you feel like I'm stuck, I've got writer's block. Or I, I can't come up with an idea or, you know, like you said, I think maybe before we started this recording, you know, I'm just not, you know, some people think I'm just not that creative. It's all, it's all based on a conception of, of self-being stuck. And, and again, just going back to simple thing, five-year-old children don't need to be taught to be creative. They just are trying to give them crayons and tell them, do you ever see, have you ever seen a five-year-old kid sitting there staring at a blank piece of paper with crayons and going, I don't know what to draw.
Mark (:I just don't know what to draw,
Michael Lee (:Picking up the drawing they've done and studying it carefully and then crumpling up and throwing it away and saying, no, not that was terrible.
Mark (:This is not worth the refrigerator. Yes. Don't put this up.
Michael Lee (:You know, mean maybe Picasa was like that, but I doubt it. You know, if you think of the great creative minds of history, people that you might admire, people you might discuss, I would be hard pressed to think of. And you'll have a moment where you'll disagree with me, but I'll, I'll show you what I mean, you'll think of those people. And you'll almost always get that these were people who were absolutely free. Now you got people like, say, Van Gogh, right? Who are you going to be like, Oh, that guy was miserable. And, but notably, and I've studied a little bit as he was happy and delighted when he was painting, when he wasn't, he was a miserable, depressed person. But as long as he was actually being creative, he was totally free. And you can see it in his work. Right. You can see that he changed and dodged and try different things all the time.
Michael Lee (:So even people that, you know, this there's another one of the myths of creativity. It's very important for people to get is that this idea that I certainly succumb to for a long time, that you have to be miserable and suffering to be creative is absurd. People that are that way and are creative it's despite that, not because of it. Now Van Gogh was creative because of his suffering. He was, he was creative and he was suffering, but he was suffering because he had a mental disorder, you know, not because creativity, he couldn't be a genius without that. And I think like people like Picasso show you, or, or, or someone like Edison, you know, people like Picasso they will show you so clearly, like, I think traditionally if we look at his life, he just loved his life all the time. He had a great time, you know, I don't think there's stories about how Picasso was an anguish, you know, or Salvador Dali, or, you know, some of the people we think of as great creative minds.
Michael Lee (:And I, I, I'm sorry to keep going back to art, but if you look at, I don't know, like, like Elon Musk, great creative-minded business, he does not seem like a guy who is suffering. You know? So I think if you you'd be hard pressed to convince me of one single person you could point to and say that guy was creative because he was unhappy because the fact is creativity is a positive emotion. It's a positive experience. It is the act of being something like God, right? It's the act of spawning something new that didn't exist before. And, and, and that only attaches itself to positive experiences. So, so the way to be more creative, that's the simplest of all is just like stop being negative about stuff, and actually, just be happy, happy people are creative.
Mark (:Well, and you've talked about you know, the creation, but you've also been very prolific and producing the work. You talked about the documentaries and TV shows. You have books, you have courses, you have programs. Where does the, I guess, overcoming the self-judgment or overcoming these self-criticisms to get the workup and out. I always say, get your work out into the world. You know, how do, how do you personally overcome that roadblock?
Michael Lee (:Well, look, the first and simplest thing to do is, is something that Julia Cameron adapted from Dorothy, Brande who wrote a book, becoming a writer, I think 1934. And you know, it's existed for decades and centuries before that's called free writing. And it's not just for writers, but it seems like writers. Talk about it more because they're writers that talk about stuff, but you know, the bottom line simplest way to unlock that inner voice that's stopping you is to just sit down and write whatever's in your head every single day. Usually right? When you get up, if you can and do it for enough time, 15 minutes or 20 minutes that you get into a flow that you're, that you start to disassociate from what the words are, because what, what you're saying, Mark is so perfect is get it out into the world and reiterate, right.
Michael Lee (:Professional artists and business people don't sit on their ideas and anguish over them forever. They either know what they're doing because they're so skillful and masterful that they know when what they've written is bad and they know how to fix it. And then they just do that. Like Ernest Hemingway famously said, am I allowed to curse? Cause he said this, or do you want to bleep me out?
Mark (:I'll bleep you out. So we'll, we'll keep it clean for now.
(:Okay. Well, anyway, Ernest, Ernest Hemingway famously said, the first draft of everything is a word that begins with S right. And, and, and you know, so for Ernest Hemingway, he did not suffer. He was a guy I mean, he did suffer. He blew his head off with a shotgun, but it wasn't part of his work. Right. He suffered because he was an unhappy person at some point, but he, he got up every day, he wrote until about noon.
Michael Lee (:And then he went out in a half, you know, hung around and, and he was a journalist by trade and he was a journalist at heart. He'd like to go out and find out things and talk to people and hear things. And that fueled his work too. But he got up every day typed, you know, his stuff left his work in the typewriter. So that the next morning when he sat back down, he would just start typing in the next word. And that was how he overcame the inner voice. He didn't have time for it. He just sat down and kept writing what he was running. And then it was going to be bad, 80% or whatever of the words he was using, he was going to get rid of. So it wasn't, you know, the anguish comes from judging yourself and trying to think that you should be doing something better than you are again, that five-year-old does not do that.
Michael Lee (:Right. They just look at the page, they've done it. And they get proud of it. Excited about imagine the power of being that five-year-old and having all the knowledge and experience you've built up over you at the same time, right? Because the five-year-old doesn't have that. They don't have the skill of drawing. They, they draw, terrible things like doesn't look good, but, but imagine that child having studied to become a great, you know, a great drawer imagine them having the experience to put subtext and meaning into their drawing based on their life experiences and having the freedom of the mind of that five-year-old at the same time, that's Picasso, right. And that's, and that's what we want to achieve. So the simplest way for me is that freewriting is a great exercise to do, but what I've learned over I've given up and recovery from addiction had a lot to do with it.
Michael Lee (:Also, Mark, I used to be a very anxiety-filled person. I used to be a very regretful person. I constantly, my mind would just go to what went wrong in the past and how what's happening now is just another example of it or how, what is happening now is, you know, Oh gosh, I was trying to overcome what happened before and now I failed. Oh, no. Right. And what got me to leave that behind was getting to a point in my life where I was in a hospital, thinking that maybe I was never going to get out of the hospital. And my daughter was never been seeing me again. And, you know, I was actually, my life was ruined and I had to stop it and I have to get them one like, stop this, you know just cut it out because all of that stuff is just a form of mental indiscipline.
Michael Lee (:It's letting your mind run over you. Like, like, like it's a car and you're just standing there like going, please run over me again. You know, like you wouldn't do that normally, but we all think it's okay to do that in our heads. You know, it's not, it's insane. Regret is actually insane.
Mark (:So true.
Michael Lee (:You know? So, for me, the, easiest way to, to be creative and not be judging yourself and holding yourself back is to just get that like most of what we breathe air all the time. Right. We breathe in, we breathe out and then I do a talk on this. We breathe in air. We breathe out air . Most of what we breathe out is the same stuff we breathe in. It's almost the same, except for the carbon monoxide. It's quite heavy. But most of what the oxygen levels are almost the same.
Michael Lee (:The nitrogen levels are almost the same. We breathe it in, we breathe it out. We don't get obsessed with like the quality of what we're reading out. Right. We don't go like, Oh, is that air I'm breathing out. Good enough. We just keep doing it. And that's what creativity is. Just keep doing it and get the most of what you breathe out. You're going to probably breathe in again. And it's probably not that useful to anything except trees. And it's okay. Because a little bit of what you breathe out is worthwhile to share, you know, and that's, and that's what people have to really stop being again attached to the ego of like, okay, I wrote this thing and it's not that good. Or I or I have this business idea and it's not quite working again. Thomas Edison did not do that with the light bulb.
Michael Lee (:He didn't say, Oh, I've tried it 3000 times. Now, this is just not going to work. He had a vision; the vision was electricity for everybody. And part of his vision was like, he wanted to be richer. But part of it was a vision of like, you know, helping the world, all that stuff, but the vision never went away. And that vision meant that every single thing he did was not a failure. It was just another step. And if people just get that in whatever, whether you're creative, whether you're applying it to your art or whether you're applying it to your business or whether you're applying it to your personal relationship with your friend or what you're going to do this weekend, just stop trying to be right about it. It's not the way creativity works. Very
Mark (:Encouraging, very encouraging. Well, Michael before we close, I want to make sure, because people are going to want to hear more and learn more about your approach. Where can they connect with you and learn more about your work?
Michael Lee (:So, easiest thing is to go to my website which is www.inneotidityinstitute.com. It sounds like a mouthful, but it's not that hard. It's I N N O T I V I T Y Institute. And the other place that's really simple is LinkedIn. If you look me up Michael Lee my, my tag is actually Michael Lee creativity. So feel free to reach out to me there. On the website, you can also see the trainings that we do. We do creativity and innovation training, which is completely online. And you can do it at your own pace. It takes eight weeks. If you do it with focus, but half an hour a day, or, you know, you can take your time. We also, as you mentioned, right at the beginning we have a creativity and innovation coach training program that comes along with an international certification from the international coaches registered, and we're going to be adding the ICF to that soon as well. So it's a fully like it actually qualifies you as a creativity and innovation coach. And that's a program that's both, that's both self, you know, done. And also we have live group coaching together as well. And some certification processes. The reason I mentioned that now is when you go to the website, you can get information about either of those. You can book a call with me at the website. You can watch some videos of previous parts I've done. And someday soon, Mark, very soon, you'll be able to order my books.
Mark (:Very good. I'd love that. And, and you'll continue to put out new work just like you're encouraging us to do. I'm sure,
Michael Lee (:Absolutely. I'm working on a couple of screenplays and films right now. And I've got about three other books that are kind of sketched out time, time
Mark (:That's all right. Well, listeners, my guest has been Michael Lee, just a terrific and energetic, as you can hear, you know, innovation, creativity, thinker, and doer. Michael, I liked that you've been provocative and inspiring and encouraging all at the same time to kind of break our brains of maybe some old thinking, get us unstuck and some old ways and moving forward and inspiring us and encouraging us. And whether it's been some of the artists that Michael is referred to, you know, from the Edisons and the van Goghs and Picasso's, and Hemingway's, you know, one of the things that I would take away from this discussion, Michael, is that we just need to keep creating, putting it out there, producing, experimenting you, revise. I love the editing idea, whether you're writing, you know, the editing is usually associated with just print writing, but boy editing and revising and experimenting can cross a lot of creative disciplines. Can't it?
Michael Lee (:Yeah, absolutely are completely spot on. And the thing about it or that you just said, it's really important. I just want to add is, you know, stop trying to edit while you're writing, stop trying to edit while you're coming up with ideas. Well, that's a good, that's why
Mark (:Creation and editing time. That's right.
Michael Lee (:No, I mean, the, you know, there is a job called editor that, that people who are professionals I'm currently editing a book for a colleague on innovation. And the reason that happened was that she liked my read of it so much as I just a friendly reader that she asked me to help her finish it. And, you know, I have to have a completely different brain looking at her work and trying to think, how do I make her work better? She can't do it. She's written a whole book. You know she's, she's had ideas that didn't work and she still doesn't really understand if those working on the need, you know, so you can edit your own work, whether it's artistic work or, or science or whatever, it doesn't matter, but you can do that. But the fact is that creativity happens best in collaboration and only writers even come close to, you know, maybe painters and writers come close to like, not doing that. Right. But the fact is that professional writers, how about, and professional painters, artists are safe. That's right. You know, so, so yes, you can be, but stop trying to edit while you create it's, it's actually a terrible, terrible practice, you know, be a five-year-old make a drawing and then afterward, take a breath. I could go on and on Mark. I'm sorry. I could go on and on.
Mark (:Well, we will continue the conversation. Yeah, for sure. We will have you again because I do want to continue this conversation and continue to explore this continuum of creativity and innovation. So let's get back together again.
Michael Lee (:Thank you, Mark. Anytime. And you're, you're a great person to talk to. And yeah, just remember Innotivity, that's one thing
Mark (:You go and folks my guest has been Michael Lee and the website is www.Innotivityinstitute.com. So thanks for joining me on the, around the world virtual trip here, we've gone to Johannesburg South Africa today. Michael has really given us a lot of inspiration and encouragement to be more creative and to produce the results of that creativity. So let's notice, come back again. Next time. We'll continue to explore where experts get their original thinking, how they organize their ideas. And most of all, as Michael has underscored how they make connections and collaborate to get their work up and out into the world. So until next time, this is Mark Stinson. We've been unlocking your world of creativity. We'll see you next time.
