Richard Jacobs: Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius Podcast now part of the Finding Genius Foundation. Today, my guest is Dr. Eric Maisel. He’s the author of more than 50 books. His interests include creativity, creative life, the profession of creativity, coaching, which has sounded issues surrounding your life’s purpose meaning mental health and Critical Psychology (Critical Psychiatry).

Would you tell me a bit about your background? What are some of the things you’ve worked on over the years?

Dr. Eric Maisel: My background varied as the background of many people does. I have undergraduate degrees in Philosophy and Psychology. I have a pair of masters, one in Creative Writing and other in Counseling. I have a PhD in Counseling Psychology. I’m retired, but I was a licensed California Marriage and Family Therapist. I worked exclusively with creating and performing artists for a long time. I segue to coaching and moved out of the therapy model into the coaching world. I’ve been coaching creative and performing artists for the last 30 plus years.

Richard Jacobs: What kinds of coaching? You said the performing artists, are these senior songwriters?

Dr. Eric Maisel: Creative and Performing artists, that’s kind of the phrase that catch all phrase for writers, painters, musicians, or anybody in one of the creative disciplines. I’ve been coaching them for a long time now on the emotional issues, practical issues, work related issues, marketplace issues, how to deal with blockage, procrastination and resistance, how to make a goal of it in the marketplace, as a creative person.

Richard Jacobs: What are some of the tenants or things that people struggle with in creative professions?

Dr. Eric Maisel: The first thing is getting the work done. I have a recent book out called “The Power of Daily Practice.” The point of that book is to remind creatives that if you miss a couple of days of your creative work, what happens is that weeks, months and years seem to disappear. It’s easy for that to fall off your plate. So the number one issue is actually getting the work done.

The second issue would be the creative anxiety. The anxiety that arises as a natural feature of the creative process. The anxiety arises for lots of reasons, but the main one is that the creative process is actually making one choice after another and choosing provokes anxiety. So anxiety naturally threads its way through the creative process. A lot of creatives don’t realize that they have to deal with anxiety is a lifelong issue. Also, there are all kinds of other issues including marketplace issues, not feeling like, you’re good at selling your work, not wanting to sell your work, not feeling well to the marketplace.

Richard Jacobs: Is this different for someone that’s new to the creative process versus someone that’s been doing it for years? What if someone’s been doing X for 5 or 10 years, are they over it or that’s the thing you never get over?

Dr. Eric Maisel: Absolutely not, issues like anxiety, depression, sadness, addictions or whatever you want to call it. In fact, the first year, after an artist great success is the year he or she is most prone to fall prey to an addiction. So you don’t get over it. A simple example is Tolstoy, who wrote two great novels, “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina.” He was stopped dead in his tracks and didn’t write another novel for 40 years. He was overcome by a existential depression, around how can I follow up those two novels with another novel? So every creative person typically has issues that last until the end of time.

Richard Jacobs: If these people, I’m sure most of them, maybe got help from friends and family. But if they didn’t get some help to get them over the hump, then a lot of wonderful works of literature, art and everything else would never see the light of day.

Dr. Eric Maisel: They don’t typically get help from friends and family, because friends and family are typically unsupportive of the creative journey because the creative is not making money and that’s a black mark. So the creatives mate would like him or her to do something different and bring money into the family income, etcetera. I would say that as a rule, creatives don’t feel supported by the people around them, including the people who love them.

Richard Jacobs: How do people overcome them? Did their minds get worked in the effort to deal with this consistent stress?

Dr. Eric Maisel: They typically don’t overcome it. This is not a smiley face enterprise working with creatives. An awful lot high, 90% of creative folks end up being disappointed in their output and in the efforts they’ve made, etcetera. It takes someone who views himself or herself as the exception to make it. The rule is that if you’re in the arts, you won’t make it. You’ll will only make it if you prove to be the exception if you do more than the next person or if you are a little bit clever than the next person.

Richard Jacobs: I know you couldn’t help everybody, but what do you see historically? What are the heuristics that successful people use to overcome this doubt?

Dr. Eric Maisel: It isn’t that they’ve overcome it, they do their work, despite it. It’s that they’re driven to do their work. It’s the major difference between somebody who gets their work done and somebody who doesn’t. The person who gets their work done is driven for whatever reasons to get the work done or someone who doesn’t get it done is merely interested in his or her own ideas. There’s a huge difference between being merely interested and really driven to get the work done. Also, there’s some underpinning of deep love, enthusiasm, and devotion on the part of someone who gets their work done. Pavarotti has a quote I like, which is, “People think I’m disciplined, but it’s not discipline. It’s devotion.” There’s a big difference. A lot of creatives think they’re not disciplined enough, but actually, they’re not devoted enough to what they’re doing.

Richard Jacobs: You have a background in creativity. I don’t know if you’ve conducted thousands of brainstorming sessions. What is creativity look like in your life? What kinds of things have you done that you felt good about?

Dr. Eric Maisel: Mostly, it’s writing books. I grew up as a book loving person. I’ve done 50 or 60 books. So that’s how my creativity expresses itself. Actually, I had a little visual art period in my life. Basically, I’m a word person and that’s how I express my creativity.

Richard Jacobs: What are some of the books that you’ve written? What are the themes or what are they about?

Dr. Eric Maisel: A lot of them are about the creative life. There’s a book about creativity and depression, The Van Gogh Blues. For creativity and addiction there’s a book called Creative Recovery. For creativity and anxiety there’s a book called Mastering Creative Anxiety. There is lot of the books are for creative people. I’m also interested in issues of life, purpose and meaning. I’ve done a book called Life Purpose Boot Camp and other books related to making a paradigm shift from the idea of singular life purpose to the idea of life purposes, which I think is a better idea, and a shift from the idea of seeking meaning to the idea of making meaning.

I have lots of different ideas around life purpose and meaning and also, the mental health issues. I’ve done lots of books with titles, like The Future of Mental Health, Rethinking Depression, and Humane Helping. I’m interested in enacting a paradigm shift from the current diagnosing and treating mental disorder paradigm to something new that we haven’t seen yet that is a more humane helping paradigm.

Richard Jacobs: How does creativity interact with anxiety versus depression versus mental issues? Who tends to get anxious? What’s the creative process, if you’re laboring under that versus depression?

Dr. Eric Maisel: I don’t know if it’s versus, I think both are coming in a creative person’s life. They’re going to have to deal with a case of blues because that will be existential depression. It’s often hard for creatives to continue feeling that their work matters. If you don’t feel like your work matters, then the reasons for doing them have evaporated. You’ll fall into that existential funk, of not having reasons for living or doing your work. So most creatives are going to have that experience of feeling at some point that their work doesn’t matter. They’re going to be plagued by what I call The Van Gogh Blues, by the existential blues.

Virtually, every creative person is going to experience creative anxiety because of the creative process being choosing one choice after another and choosing provoking anxiety. Also, the specter of criticism, rejection, and all of those things that are coming in a creative person’s life that nobody really wants. Performance anxiety, as you know, is the world’s number one phobia. So it is so strong in us to be made anxious by the idea of showing ourselves in public that it’s no wonder the creative people are anxious. The blank canvas and the blank computer screen are also like performances. Creative people experience that as performance anxiety, sitting there in front of a blank canvas or a blank computer screen.

There are lots of sources of anxiety, depression, and addiction in a creative person’s life. Primarily, because creative people come into the world with bigger appetites, more cheese, and more energy. It’s wonderful, if you make use of it, but it’s not wonderful if you need thousand more peanuts, drugs or whatever. So if you can manage that appetite, that’s wonderful. But if you can’t manage that appetite, then you’re under threat of an addiction.

Richard Jacobs: It’s funny, I guess for me is podcast. I’ve done just about 3000 of them in under five years. I remember a friend of mine saying to me, “Why don’t you just do it 24/7? Isn’t that enough?” I laughed, and I’m like, “Yes, you’re right.”

Dr. Eric Maisel: Of course not, for somebody with that kind of appetite, nothing’s enough and that is a problem for creative people that often the second they finished something they already feel the drive. Picasso could not pass a blank canvas, even somebody else’s blank canvas without needing to fill it up. I did a book called Brainstorm, which is about productive obsessions. In my mind, they’re both unproductive obsessions, namely, washing your hands thousand times a day. Whereas, productive obsession, namely, being curious about things and wanting to do the next podcast, paint the next painting, or write the next sonnet. Those productive obsessions are fine as long as they’re kept within bounds, they don’t turn into unproductive manias and you go off the rails. There are lines to be walked where you nurture your appetites, but you also have to be careful that you don’t go too far.

Richard Jacobs: What is your coaching look like? How it’s different for every person? What are some of the tenets of it?

Dr. Eric Maisel: The basic tenets are coach oriented tenets. We set goals. A client has to be able to, often with my help, but has to be able to articulate what he or she wants to work on in the near future. Over the course of the next weeks or month, get usually two or three of those goals named. After that we look at the challenges, what’s going to get in the way, whether that’s family obligations, day jobs, anxiety, depression, or whatever it is that might be getting in the way. We have to concoct strategies for dealing with those obstacles and then we monitor the goals and the person then goes away. We don’t do a lot of talking. It’s not historical, it’s not like therapy. We don’t talk about the past, it’s about what do you want to get done this week. You go out and you try it, if you don’t get it done, then we talk about what didn’t work and what to try the next week. So it’s very future oriented and goal oriented.

Richard Jacobs: Have you spoken to other coaches that don’t coach creatives or just coach people that have anxiety or depression? Do you compare what you do to other coaches or is that you know your space?

Dr. Eric Maisel: It’s right, I know my space. I run support groups for creativity coaches, I train creativity coaches that’s the space I’m in. I don’t know, really what a business coach, a spiritual coach, or some other coach might do. It’s my hunch that they’re all goal oriented. It’s kind of a basic tenet of coaching that the coach and the client have to co-create some goals, so that they know what they’re working on. Beyond that, I wouldn’t know how the different kinds of coaching played themselves out.

Richard Jacobs: Do you have any interesting stories that jumped out at you, about people you’ve coached without, obviously identify names? Any interesting results you’ve been able to get for people are really positive ones?

Dr. Eric Maisel: Well, one that pops out is a woman who did a lot of creative things, like she was a performance artist and had an interesting performance artists career. She had never written anything, but wanted to start on her first novel and attended a writing workshop of mine. We work together. She went through the whole process of not believing in our ideas, not understanding that the main thing was to show up and not attached to outcomes, the whole gamut of process that everybody has to go through. The upshot of that was she ended up with a two book deal and became a very well-known writer. So that’s by way of saying that someone can start at ground zero. If you stick to the process, which means being willing to make mistakes and messes, showing up every day, and not attaching to outcomes and blaming yourself on a bad day, etcetera. There are probably 50 things to be said about how attending to process works. If you do, it tend to process. You can move from never having much done anything in a particular genre, to doing very well in that genre.

Richard Jacobs: What is the creative process? What a healthy way for the creative process to occur versus an unhealthy way in your observation?

Dr. Eric Maisel: I’m not sure if there’s an unhealthy creative process, I think not honoring the creative process is the problem. If you come to the work with some hope for a guarantee that the work is going to be excellent that’s a recipe for failure. If you look at any creative person, such as Bob Dylan, how many of those thousands of songs are wonderful? 30 or 50? How many of Beethoven’s symphonies are wonderful? Maybe half. You could look at any creative person, and you’ll see that only a percentage of their output is really good. It takes a certain maturity to understand that you’re going to be starting something without a guarantee. It may well not prove excellent.

People who need that guarantee, we typically call them perfectionist, but I would say it’s not perfectionism, rather it just this desire for some guarantee that the thing is going to work before they actually work on it. We have to get the work done, that when we look at the thing. We have to have our eyes open and honestly appraise it and make it better, etcetera. It’s honoring the process. Whereas, sitting there dreaming about winning the Nobel Prize and needing some guarantee that this book that you’re not writing is going to be good. It’s kind of dishonoring the process.

Richard Jacobs: What does it look, like people that are one hit wonders, stopped their creativity and process, they let it go and give up on it, versus ones that don’t?

Dr. Eric Maisel: Probably, every one of those people has a different story. Sometimes you get lucky and your best ideas or first idea that can happen, then you struggle to figure out how to deal with that your second best idea not arriving. If it was a big success, you might be dealing with suddenly a whole social environment that you never knew was coming with sex, drugs and a whole world offered to you because, now you’re a celebrity. It’s certainly going to derail you and make it difficult for you to get on with your next work. But there’s every sort of story.

Also, there is the odd truth, that what you’re supposed to do next is both, repeat yourself because that’s what people want and also top yourself to do better. It’s actually a very odd requirement that you both do the same thing and top yourself. Also, you may not want to repeat that thing. Let’s take one classic example, Arthur Conan Doyle was so upset that Sherlock Holmes was so popular and his other novels weren’t being read that he killed Sherlock Holmes off. His fans were so upset that they pestered him so much, they he had to bring Sherlock Holmes back from the dead. You can have that kind of problem where the thing that you’re so well known for isn’t interesting to you, but you’ve got to keep doing it. It’s like you have to sing your same seven cover songs till the end of time, because that’s where people are coming to the cafe or the nightclub for. There are lots of reasons why it’s hard to follow up a success with the next success.

Richard Jacobs: You have the inside track, what are their perceptions of the thing that famous for them and they’re just sick to death of?

Dr. Eric Maisel: They’re sick to death of it, but they also know that it’s their meal ticket. At that point in their lives, they also have a lot of responsibilities. They may have a whole staff, all kinds of people, their agents, managers, and roadies, and there this and that, who need them to keep being successful. They feel that pressure of repeating their successes, even if they would like to do a whole new thing. It’s very rare for something to happen, like Bob Dylan going electric. Somebody throwing over what they’re known for and doing something that they know is going to get them booed. It does get you booed. It’s actually rare for an artist to make that stark transition from the thing they don’t want to do anymore to something new, they want to try.

Most creative folks will stay, repeat themselves and do that thing to the end of time, primarily because they want the income to come in, but they have all kinds of responsibilities and duties around that work.

Richard Jacobs: It sounds like a very conflicted existence. Is that why anxiety and depression seem to ride along with creative people?

Dr. Eric Maisel: It is a very conflicted profession. You can imagine singing the same song for the 10,000th time. Most people can’t imagine that. For them, the artist is singing it fresh that night, but for the artists, that’s not how they’re experiencing. Some artists seem to feel like they are experiencing it a new each time. To my eye, Bruce Springsteen, in his heyday, he seemed to be delivering that concert from his heart each night. It’s not true for a lot of artists that they’re mailing it in, rather than really performing.

Richard Jacobs: I never really thought about these people nearly as deeply as you have. What they go through? What their lives are like? Do they experience anxiety and depression differently than other types of people?

Dr. Eric Maisel: Well, of course, that isn’t really my clientele. But I would say that they don’t experience anxiety and depression around their creative life. Even if they could be creative, they walled that off. They’ve made some decision that they’re not creative and that’s their internal talking point, “I’m not a creative person.” So they’ve blocked that off. Even if they could be creative, they’ve decided not to go down that route, maybe because they have some intuition that they don’t want to do that hard work or maybe they have a better intuition in some ways of what it takes to write a novel than a novelist does. So they don’t want to go down that route and make all of that work for themselves.

I’m sure they have all the typical anxieties and depressions. For me, I try to help people understand that root cause of anxiety and depression for everyone, is this mistaken idea that there is some purpose to life they’re supposed to figure out, as opposed to making the shift to deciding that they have to identify and then live their life purposes in the plural. Once people get to that idea, they have to actually create a menu of life purposes, then some of that anxiety and depression immediately goes away, because they understand how they can work on their life. They don’t have to go to the top of some mountain or sit at some guru’s feet, but they have to decide for themselves, what’s important to them and what their life purposes are going to amount to. In a regular way, daily practice, or in a weekly way, they actually attend to those life purposes. If a person can do that, it ends up being a more powerful and a more passionate and a more meaningful life.

Richard Jacobs: Are you saying that it’s a danger to have a very narrow existence as a creative person? Only work on the stuff you’re good at, is that what you’re saying or what do you mean?

Dr. Eric Maisel: It’s the part of what I’m saying. It’s a trap. One of the ways that we reduce our experience of anxiety is to do something we know. The unknown is more anxiety producing than what we know. If we’ve learned how to do something, make a certain kind of painting. Let’s say, we are great at painting artichokes, but the idea of painting potatoes makes us a little anxious because we don’t know how to do that. We’re going to keep painting artichokes, but that’s going to stunt our growth, because then we won’t have the opportunity to paint turnips, potatoes and every other kind of vegetable. So artists do have to be careful about repeating themselves. They have to check in to make sure that they’re not repeating themselves, just to reduce their experience of anxiety. To say that another way around, they have to keep taking risks or else they won’t grow.

Richard Jacobs: What about their daily activities? How much of it should be their creative outlay? Is eight hours a day is too much or four days a week or seven?

Dr. Eric Maisel: It’s way too much. Really, if you actually get to your creative life for an hour or two a day, that’s tremendous. You have other life purposes, too. In my model, there are other things that are important to you too relationships, your other careers, or activism service. We could name all kinds of things that are also important. It’s a mistake. A lot of creative people fall into this category of making this mistake. It’s a mistake to think that only your creativity matters, that’s a way to actually live a very cold and lonely life. If you think that creating matters and relating doesn’t, then you’re going to be the Van Gogh’s of the world. You’re going to be somebody who has a tremendous output over a short period of time, but still ends up committing suicide because you don’t have any love in your life.

We need to live a balanced life as creatives. It’s not about getting in 12 hours of creating and then collapsing. It’s not the right life, the right life is getting in some amount of a very regular way, getting to your creative life every day, but then also having the rest of your life work.

Richard Jacobs: So successful creative people actually work only an hour or two a day? Is that enough?

Dr. Eric Maisel: If they got to that, you would be surprised how happy most creative people would be with that kind of output. They would be thrilled to actually get to their work for an hour or two. Obviously, there are creative people who work lots more than that, 4 or 6 hours. For most creative people, actually get to their work for a couple of hours each day, would be a mile ahead of where they are now currently.

Richard Jacobs: I’m sure everyone expects them to be experts in everything, like Matthew McConaughey is playing pickup basketball. He probably doesn’t have any skill on it. What do you think it would be like for him with the people he buys basketball with? Would they expect that he’d be good at everything because he’s good at acting?

Dr. Eric Maisel: I don’t have a real answer to that, but I do think that there is probably a Halo Effect or some sense in which somebody was good at something. I mean, why would a great tennis player be the right spokesperson about some product? Why would he be expert about that product? We know that it’s just a celebrity status that got him the gig to promote that product. Yet, somehow we’re supposed to believe that he is expert at all of these different things that he’s promoting. I do think that it makes sense what you’re saying that probably there was some effect, where we believe that Tom Brady knows something other than football or somebody knows something about other than what their real expertise is.

Richard Jacobs: I have a friend that does networking in computers. I just feel like he knows everything about computers, but he always reminds me, I only know one part of computers. So I think that’s what happens with doctors. People think that they know everything about health.

Dr. Eric Maisel: We can tell by looking at a lot of doctors that they don’t care take care of themselves. We know that they may not actually have self-wisdom. They may know a lot of stuff about medicine, but that’s not the same as knowing enough about life to take care of themselves.

Richard Jacobs: What have you learned about the nature of anxiety and depression as you work with creative people?

Dr. Eric Maisel: I think the headline, if I just were to say it simply is that there are natural unexpected consequences of living a certain life and not mental disorders. To imagine that there’s some pill that’s going to work to take away the anxiety of a creative person with the existential despair of a creative person is a mistake. Chemicals have effects and so that pill may have a certain kind of effect. It may tranquilize the person or do something to that person, but it’s not an adequate or real treatment for something that isn’t a mental disorder. The anxiety and depression that come with the territory, doesn’t make them mental disorders. It makes them lifelong challenges, but not diseases.

Richard Jacobs: What some of the hardest work people on your coaching have to do?

Dr. Eric Maisel: If I have to say a couple of things, in shorthand would be believing in themselves and thinking thoughts that serve them. It’s very hard for most people to actually think thoughts that serve them. Most people are thinking self-pestering thoughts all the time. Showing up, I would say those are the three main things, believing in themselves, thinking thoughts that serve them, and actually showing up to the work.

Richard Jacobs: How long does it take on average for people to really get traction, and to feel and work better?

Dr. Eric Maisel: One session can help a lot, because a lot of these things have been known to the creative person all along. I just get to reflect them back or articulate them in a first session. They go, “Sure, I knew I was supposed to show up every day. I don’t know what I was thinking, that I could write a novel by showing up once every 16 months, that’s not.” In other words, they quickly get some of these core ideas that they ought to be thinking thoughts that serve them, and to be getting to their work every day, etcetera. So even one session can make a huge difference.

Richard Jacobs: Any comments that have jumped out at you that surprised you? Have you just nodded your head internally, like, “Yes, I’m getting through to this person.” The things that seems to be common place that you experience as the coach, does it tells you that the person is on the right track?

Dr. Eric Maisel: I absolutely can tell if a person’s on the right track, but I’m not sure I could describe how I know that. There’s a difference between talking vaguely about the novel you’d like to write or still making a choice between two or three novel ideas and talking in an animated fashion about a particular problem in chapter three that the creative person really wants to get solved. It’s the movement from a kind of vague detachment and to kind of fantasy connection to the work to actually being inside the work is one of the proofs that a creative person is on track.

Richard Jacobs: Have you ever coached someone that you love what they do creatively? Were you a little bit star-struck by them, but you had to go and shake it off and still help them?

Dr. Eric Maisel: I try not to look at the work, like any human being, if you give me the URL to your website. I’m probably going to look at your paintings, but I try not to look at the work, because it’s not about the work. If I love a particular kind of music and you’re doing another kind of music, I don’t want that to affect. I don’t want me to try to change you to make the music I want you to make. So I tend not to look at the work, but sometimes I do. There are artists I love among my clients. Yet, I’ve worked with world famous artists whose work I love.

So yes, I have worked with artists whose work I love. It doesn’t turn my head. They have the same issues, the same problems, and the same challenges. We’re still in there in the nitty-gritty, so I’m not star-struck by them. We just have to get down to the work.

Richard Jacobs: Do you see a lot of creative people that say, “I’m more creative when I’m drunk or I’m high, or I’m doing this or that on mushrooms?

Dr. Eric Maisel: They historically say that, but they don’t say to me. It’s been a common theme or cop out. If you say that to my face, my responses will be, let’s take a real look at that and my energy will be to have the person enter recovery at some point, because I don’t buy that picture.

Richard Jacobs: You’ve written 50 Plus books, where do people start, so they don’t get overwhelmed? Where should they go to find out more about you and if they want coaching?

Dr. Eric Maisel: If creativity is on their mind, then I would recommend my book, Coaching the Artist Within. If mental fitness and mental health is what’s on their mind, then I would recommend a book that’s coming out in a couple of weeks called Redesign Your Mind. You can find out lots more about me at my website, www.ericmaisel.com.