How To Think Like History’s Greatest Genius - Michael Gelb

why would anyone want to think like Leonardo da Vinci why would anybody not want to think like Leonardo da Vinci if you even dreamed that it was possible most people are never really made aware of the phenomenal unlimited potential with which we are all born the incredible brains that we're gifted with but they didn't come with a manual so you know just like baby ducks learned to walk by imitating their mothers we learn how to think and how to be by the people we get to imitate and usually that's a default setting your mom and dad the people around you when you grow up your teachers but what if you called on History's Greatest genius to be your personal Mentor in utilizing those amazing capabilities what was D Vinci like as a person what was his demeanor he was Charming he was funny he was elegant he liked to dress really well he wore the finest clothes that he could afford the finest Fabrics he was a musician he had a gift for making people feel comfortable for connecting with others which is part of how he was able to get highlevel patrons throughout his career he Charmed them and they they thought well we kind of like this guy let's keep him around and see what he can do and then he winds up you painting the the last supper and the Mona Lis and a few other things so he was a canny operator then uh yeah I mean you had to be to to get by at at at that time you needed a patronage you needed a sponsor just like I noticed you always have these great sponsors on your show and I want to buy all those products every time I watch you like yeah I need that backpack they're my patrons yeah exactly you need backpack shout out um how much you know I I love Italy I've spent a lot of time in Florence and Rome I recently came back from Venice um you know the period of time Michelangelo Da Vinci uh politically very interesting in Italy how much did the sort of political landscape the cultural landscape of Italy and at the time do you think sort of shape who he was his opportunities the way he saw the world the places that he placed his efforts sure well he had to move because of political turmoil his tenure his original tenure in Florence came to an end when he saw that uh he might be better off under the patronage of ludovico sporza the Duke of Milan so you probably read the most famous employment applic letter of all time can you tell people about that that well you got to love it it because most illustrious Lord and then he basically says having seen what other people can do I gotta tell you I can do way better and then he goes on to say I can build you Bridges I can take care of everything in time in times of War because the felt need of despots like sporza was build me some Cannon uh help me get uh underwater to blow up the enemy's Fortress so Leonardo goes on and on about how he can help with all this and then he says uh I think it's number 11 he says oh yeah by the way I can do a little painting and then he says not only that I'll come to your Palace and I'll prove that I can do all of this and then he says all in most gracious humility he got the job the it's that line also I can paint uh that I just adore you know this sort of huge illustrious list of things war machines battle plans technology engineering also I can paint it's just so did he see did he see his Artistic Endeavors as kind of second string in in some regard or was that just playing to the fact that this guy probably needed war machines and and curating to the audience you got to give the customer what they're what they're asking for and he want what he wanted and what he needed to come back to your earlier question you know he he wound up he was in the Vatican for a while he was under the patronage of chesiree boura he had a second time in Florence under the reconstituted mediche uh he then was back in Milan for a while under the patronage of the French and then he spent the last three years of his life as the philosopher and basically highlevel executive coach to franois the first the K the king of France so he had to do what he had to do in order to continue to do what he really wanted to do which was to understand the mind of God what Leonardo was passionately curious about what is truth what is beauty what is goodness how do they all fit together so for him art what we call Art and what we call science were just ways of exploring truth what is so what is real what is the nature of things you know he he draws the very first reasonably accurate drawing of an embryo in the wound cuz he really wanted to understand the secret of life so the science is he did dissections of more than 30 bodies which was very very hard to do at that that time without running water and electric light and refrigeration and so on and so forth and yet the way he drew the things that he was dissecting are so EX exquisitly beautiful they are works of art and Science and that that's the fifth principle for thinking like Leonardo is artenza the integration of Art and Science the drive that he has to do the things that he does it seems to come from sort of quite a balanced place you know I I as you go around the Vatican or wherever else there's sort of two it's Michelangelo and da Vinci Michelangelo and D Vinci like that's what you know the tour guides are telling you about but it seems at least unless I'm remembering inaccurately Michelangelo was very much like a conflicted Soul you know sort of very pessimistic he had a dark dog that followed him around it seems like he maybe basically kind of had permanent depression throughout his entire life um difficult to work with like rambunctious uh uh disagreeable um and you know you can see where I think the drive for that kind of a person seems to be easier to understand in some ways that he's got this sort of fervent need to prove himself for validation uh to put his work forward because the external accolades will fill the internal void hopefully um Da Vinci's much more difficult for me to work out how he's motivated to work so hard does that make sense I I love that I love that uh the contrast between Leonardo and Michelangelo is a wonderful character study of genius and they both reflect aspects of our own quest to express ourselves and Achieve and live our life's purpose some of us do it from guilt and shame like Michelangelo and some of us do it from Love and just passionate deepest level CIO so you were in the Vatican and no doubt you saw the amazing obviously the the ceiling of the cistin chapel but the Judgment of Christ painting on the front wall of the chapel with the amazing powerful figure of Christ sending some people up to heaven sending everybody else down below and do you know where Michelangelo is on that painting because you know they always put themselves in these paintings you go back and look at this again he's hung out his his flayed skin is hung out on a branch hovering in purgatory roasting over the fires of hell so that was that was Michelangelo's painting of his own self-image having said that having said that he did uh uh uh he did do the David and the P correct and which are shows of love right their hope it's upward aiming it's the greatest that we can be amazing so so that's just the thing is we can't just reduce them to a simple psychological explanations do show me the other side then if that's the light side of Michelangelo what's the Dark Side Of Da Vinci great great great the Dark Side Of Da Vinci is is twofold one is he's been criticized uh a lot for not following through and actually finishing things now I've defended him because I feel like he was so interested in just pure perfection he wasn't competing with Michelangelo or other artists he was competing with God so part of why he couldn't finish things is he couldn't quite get everything as perfect as nature which is what he wanted to do I also think that he knew he was a genius and he ultimately didn't really care whether the monks got their Al piece or not he thought he was on to something more profound I'd say the other dark side is that he went through a period towards the end of his life of of of profound doubt he writes in the margins of his notebook uh did I really accomplish anything which is kind of amazing when you consider what he actually accomplished so I think the the sense of self-doubt of maybe losing faith or I don't think it's not really even a dark I don't see as light or dark but it's because it's it creates what he called um Kiara skuro kiar skuro is the contrast of light and dark there is no light without the dark there's no dark without the light and that's part of what makes Leonardo's artwork so interesting is the way light emerges from the dark and he he pioneered that and that's part of the deeper meaning to me of his work and why we're so drawn to it so fascinated and why most people haven't really plumbed The Depths and understood the the Real Genius that Leonardo 550 years ago was sharing for all of humanity what what do you wish more people realized that da Vinci had done you know people understand lots of the work the well-known stuff what are the uh early records or like the the underground hits that should should have had more plays on Spotify well yeah he did he did write il no mo the sun does not move many years before cernus created the yeah way it's pretty wild uh and and having said that the thing I real my my part of my mission part of why I wrote how to think like Leonardo D Vinci he was one of my childhood Heroes my grandmother's an Italian painter and she told me about him and when I was a kid you know Superman was my other hero but I grew up I found out oh he was only a comic book character but Leonardo was and part of why he fascinates us now part of why he's on a PBS special part of why there was The Da Vinci Code part of why his painting sold a few years ago for $450 million uh uh the most any work of art has ever has ever sold for which piece was it uh it was the Salvador Mundi okay uh uh the savior of the world it's an amazing Fronton uh portrait of Christ holding uh the globe of the world in the palm of his hand it's Exquisite I actually saw it it it was found it was authenticated by Professor Martin Kemp who's probably the go-to academic world expert on Leonardo and then it was sold at auction for $450 million and it's disappeared and people trying to figure out where it is but the the the point is he's in the news we're talking about him and here's the real answer to your question here's what I really wish people knew you cuz he'll endlessly Fascinate us with his art with his science with his invention but what I want people to know is that he left instructions in his notebooks on how you can think more like him on how you can use your potential and the simple sort of naive childlike question I asked many many years ago was what's he trying to teach us and is really trying to teach us how we can think more creatively how we can use all of our power and potentiality so that's what I really want people to know yeah so you've spent this time deconstructing reading an awful lot of his work how much of his work and notebooks and stuff were retained is there more lost than was kept have we got more lost and kept more lost 20,000 at best scholly estimate about 20,000 written uh uh people seem to uh choose the numbers between six and seven, Pages yeah wow oh so I mean and six to seven thousand survived exact so even though even though uh a lot lost still quite a lot to get through well I read it all way back you know when I was doing the research in this from I really focused in on in on this from 1994 to when the book came out in 1998 and I was absolutely immersed I literally I went to the place he was born I went to the place he died I walked in his footsteps I went to every Museum I could I studied the live notebooks as well as reading the RoR translations of the notebooks I interviewed the leanardo scholars I contemplated his paintings I started dreaming about him and it was from those dreams that the da Vinci principles emerged what was a typic day like for him do you know what a a normal daily routine was well there's a lot of speculation about that I would say it probably differed when he was in uh different places but we know he Advocates the importance of working with great intensity and then taking a break so whatever wherever he was whatever he was doing whether he was in his Studio or uh interacting with with patrons we know that one of the things he teaches us and Advocates which has been borne out by contemporary Research into the optimizing the psychology of memory and high performance and so on and so forth is oscillation work with great intensity actually there's a great story when he was when he was working on the on the uh the Last Supper he would be up there on the wall of the refra of the Church of Santa Maria De Gracia working for hours and hours at a time with total intensity but then he would just disappear sometimes for a few days well the prior of the Church of Santa Maria delag gr would get very upset he' say where's this Leonardo guy because he didn't know this was an all-time genius you know as far as he's concerned this is just another contractor I got veto the plumber and you know Luigi the carpenter Leo the painter so comes back and and the prior gives him a hard time Leonardo says he dismisses him so the prior complains to the Duke and the Duke summons Leonardo and asks him to explain himself and Leonardo says one of the great lines of all time he says Men of Genius sometimes work best when they work least because he knows he understands intuitively and so many of the great great geniuses understand intuitively something that we can all practice ourselves which is work with your greatest intensity and then quit while you're ahead go for a walk in nature and let it all go be open be receptive go for a walk come back write it in your notebook so in a typical day I know he worked with great intensity then went for a walk in nature wrote in his not book what he observed are the ideas that came to him and his notes were very messy and had lots of creative Doodles yeah I am I have so many thoughts about this first one being I wonder how rare it is for people to be repaid uh financially existentially for the quality of their thoughts you know most people have what are commonly referred to as [ __ ] jobs right um they have [ __ ] jobs and um it's it's you know um something that may maybe they're even like kind of Fired Up by it but it's not necessarily the most creatively demanding job in the world or maybe it is but it's creatively demanding some of the time not most of the time and uh that would have been you know you're hoing the fields you're a surf in you know a 1250 or something uh in Europe like it's the same it's all all the same so most people I think don't generate their primary source of value from the quality of their thoughts uh but the goal I think that most people are trying to get to is to be repaid for the quality of their thoughts so what you have in de Vinci is somebody who is I think optimizing for a a position that many people want to get into not necessarily everybody is into um but certainly if you get to the stage where you're trying to be creative you're trying to come up with new ideas you are paid for the quality of your thoughts that on and off thing is really interesting and then contemporarily when you think about well the modern world has kind of robbed us of the ability to be off a lot of the time because even when you're walking the phone's in your pocket you're listening to a podcast you the podcast is at two and a half times speed you are you've got people coming past you there's so much stimulus etc etc the opportunity to have a full switch off is is super interesting and and lacking I think and uh I'm I think I'm right in saying the ancient Greek word for work was not at leisure uh so work was an aberration and Leisure was the set point whereas now people kind of have this I don't know work Purgatory thing where it's just infuses France just released this new uh bylaw that said that employers can't contact employees after 5:00 p.m. at night uh or on weekends in an attempt to kind of create a hard stop uh around this but yeah just that um quality of your thoughts it's a kind of a specific use case but one that a lot of people I think aspire to and would like to get more of and then on the other side the sort of mismatch that we have with the modern world uh compared with maybe what would be better for uh flourishing uh amen well my whole career somehow I've pulled off this ability to just get paid for being a playful and creative and having fun and helping corporate people I figured that out there help the people who have money be more creative and then you get Mone teaching people who have money to make money is playing on easy mode teaching people who don't have money to not make money is playing on hard mode yeah well I try to help people who who have money make lots of money to be more creative so that they can help people who don't have money and don't have opportunity have more opportunity and more money that's my lifelong passion conscious capitalism uh I co-authored a book called The Healing organization with Raj sodia you must know all this down in Austin uh that's the headquarters John Mackey and so on uh uh uh so I've always I I realized early on that uh just like Leonardo did is that's where the power and the money is so if we can get business to think more creatively more compassionately raise the consciousness of Business Leaders then that's a way to contribute to making a better world so that's I I moved I lived I tell I was telling you before we started that I lived in England for seven years I moved to Washington DC in 1982 with this wildly idealistic notion that I would teach government how to think creatively and that would help save the world well I was quickly disabused of that notion but fortunately business people were interested and I was engaged early on by some visionary humanistic Business Leaders and it was from them I learned about the ins and outs of business and that's what I still do okay seven principles to think like Da Vinci what's the first one well the first one is one that you embody so beautifully in your in your show in your podcast and I think it's it's why people like it it's curiosita it's genuine curiosity it's a childlike focused passionate desire to know and you asked one question and you know Leonard would would never take yes for an answer what about the next qu and anybody those kids know they'll just keep asking you questions and you can get to the essence of what anybody knows in four or five questions Einstein would be like okay we don't know that after five questions so that's our Birthright our Birthright is C curiosity who are the most imaginative people little children who's got the most energy little kids but then you know you go to school they focus on getting the right answer instead of asking powerful questions you go to college or university it's way worse you have to regurgitate back what the professor said then you go into the workplace and you're not necessarily rewarding creative thinking or challenging questions it's figure out what the boss wants just like you figured out what the professor wants feed it back to the to them and the media and advertising doesn't help with any of that so having a Renaissance a rebirth of your own coros and this is what I try to guide people to do with all the practices one of the exercises in the book that has had the most legs over the decades I still get mail from people around the world there's an exercise in the book where I have you in one sitting write out a 100 questions don't lift your pen off the paper write a 100 questions you can choose a theme if you want to it doesn't really matter because what's going to happen is the first 20 or 30 questions will just be your regular quotidian mind so you know what's the meaning of life blah blah blah but you don't you're not really into it yet the middle level of questions 30 40 50 it'll be why the hell am I doing this exercise my wrist hurt why does my wrist hurt so much why did I pick up that stupid book anyway 70 80 90 100 a lot of people do 120 150 you get into new territory and you shift into it's a way to break out of the habitual mind then I have you go back through them and highlight the 10 questions that have the most power that really draw you in the most then think of those questions before you go to sleep keep your notebook by your bed because you're going to wake up with insights and ahas that in many cases will change your life so there are practices it's not just yeah be curious okay cool there practices and methodologies and and disciplines and that's one of the most powerful which is why I'm excited to share it with you yeah I I mean you know I'm so fortunate that I have the opportunity to do that 100 questions a day three or four times a week for now you know six and nearly seven years um my friends May disagree when we sit down for dinner and they just want to chill out but uh whatever uh I had a drive we went to the Mike Tyson fight we drove back and forth from the Mike Tyson fight in Dallas Dallas to Austin so three and a half hours is 200 miles and uh the fight was frankly [ __ ] but the uh trip back and forth between me and my old housemate Zach was just it's like my favorite thing to do I'm locked I'm going somewhere so it's not purposeless right uh I'm locked in a box and we went everywhere every single question that we could ask we're listening to music he's an amazing musician I'm like so why what's syncopation explain syncopation to me and why is this thing and blah blah blah and then he gets to ask dude I I I don't know I I understand that not everyone necessarily is has that innate drive but it kind of blows my mind that that's not what everybody's trying to do all the time because it's just it's the most it's the most fun thing to me it's the most fun thing and the coolest thing is it fires your imagination doesn't it and probably if when people can put up with you like if they can put up with me I've been doing this even longer than you have not on a podcast but asking people questions it fires the imagination and it raises your energy so remember we said little kids Wild imagination the most energy because they have the strongest CIO so if you want more energy you want want to fire your imagination at any time in your life you can have a personal Renaissance by empowering the questioning process it feels like what curiosity feels like to me it feels like being pulled not pushing so much of life I think you're you're forcing yourself into it you're finding a wedge you're pushing yourself into this space curiosity is the opposite it's it's you sort of posit a vacuum and the vacuum sucks you forward and uh I really like that I really I I very much do you've got the 100 questions I like that is there anything else tactically to consistently sort of keep this tick over across time people can't do the 100 questions every day journalist questions who what why where when and how just there there's a handy toolkit very simple ask a c well who's in who's involved Who's involved in the this particular project and issue uh uh how did it happen uh uh where where did it take place when did it start when will it be brought to completion uh and why is it happening that's that'll keep you busy on almost any issue for as long as you can stay up all right cool that's the first one second the second one de de it means demonstration it's a word that Leonardo actually used in his notebooks and he was saying demonstrate things through your own experience don't just accept something because a person in Authority says it or because it's written in a book so it fits with you can see how naturally is organically from CIO then okay think it through really critically so this is this is this is a yinyang Harmony we're already being asked to do be wildly open really playful childlike innocent in your questioning then be really skeptical and really tough and really critical as you drive forward with the responses to those questions so that usually have people who are naive and open and play or people who are just very critical even cynical and you know to cynic is a is a brokenhearted idealist I try to take I've got I've had lots of cynics in my class over the years as you can imagine working with construction managers and engineers and finance people and even lawyers so I try to get the cynics to become Skeptics and the Skeptics to become enthusiasts and then the super enthusiasts I get them to be more skeptical yes yeah as with as with most things man it's the golden mean and uh you know I I I really think there's something to sort of playing with the extremes as opposed to finding a balance in the middle and uh this is just where I'm at at the moment I think for a long time I tried to you know like I'm going to stay in shape mostly but like a little bit of the time I'm going to let it off I'm going to you know be skeptical quite a bit and try to be more disagreeable but I'm also going to have the open warm-hearted thing going on and that's I guess kind of optimal for relational stuff you don't want to be bipolar in all of the things that you do um but when it comes to like more strategic or structural stuff how you build your life together I think it's much easier to just go all in in One Direction and then periodize what you do so to move from the openhearted Curiosity thing to I'm going to scrutinize incredibly heavily the stuff that I've learned and then I go back because trying to do both at the same time uh is trying to creatively write whilst you proofread you can't you can't do them at the same time it's a oscill it is it's a rhythmic pulsation it's like breathing you inhale you exhale it's day and night and it's but it's understanding the harmony of those modes just like so you inhale and you get the fullness of that in breath and then there's that Exquisite moment it's the solstice of your breath it just becomes the exhale just we're coming up to December 21st that's and I love that I just love that Exquisite moment it's like it's the greatest potentiality of the hottest day of summer the top of the roller coaster it's the top of the roller coaster and then when you're at the bottom and that's called life so recognizing that that's why in the yin and yangang symbol there's that little bit of the light in the dark bit and a little bit of the dark in the in the light bit I was reading seven EES this great book by Neil Stevenson and um in it they have to try and repurpose the International Space Station to become a colony for uh all of human civilization in like two years uh and then they get up there but you end up learning Neil Stevenson's a beast you end up learning a ton about orbital Dynamics when you're up there yeah and uh it's really cool and um when you think uh just trying to intersect uh two things flat like a car hitting another car quite a lot of stuff has to happen in order for that Collision to occur but that's only on two Dimensions when you then not only put it into three dimensions but put those three dimensions moving around a spherical object it is so interesting so they're talking about again the orbital Dynamics and they use the the terms Zenith and apoy uh to and it makes me think about the exact same but now in a another dimension I'm with you man that's cool um what would you say to the recovering cynics uh who want to kind of let go of some of their worldly scrutiny and and uh sort of dark day thinking how do you want to feel how do you want to feel it's a really important uh uh question when people are in their heads and their have adopted positions a and preset lenses through which how's it working for you what's it protecting you from uh what what's what's the benefit of it if it's working for you knock yourself out uh uh uh but if it's leading you to feel less than buoyant less than joyous less than grateful and you might possibly even consider that it's that's a way you could be that life could be more buoyant and graceful and joyous then let's experiment with other ways of looking at things and just see first of all how they work in in terms of practical real problem solving but also in terms of what they do to your sense of yourself and your basic feeling of what it is to be here I love the idea of how's that working for you it's so such a it's such a ruthless question uh Naval has one that's similar where he says if you're so smart why aren't you happy and um it's crazy when you think you know I have a bug bear with cynicism not only because I find it in myself but because it's everywhere on the internet and a lot of all of my work goes out on the internet and it makes me feel disheartened because I I I love what I do and I think that most other people that are sort of normal are into learning and developing and doing stuff so then when I see that outliers which tends to be a lot of sort of more [ __ ] posty comment sections uh thankfully not not usually on this channel but it's it's still really it's just it's just not cool and uh it's crazy how tightly people will cling to a life that they ardently don't like it's like I'm I'm I'm the flagbearer for a life that I'm saying is [ __ ] but for some reason I'm also defending it I'm defending it same time it it blows my mind well you just to uh uh I mean I really meant it when I said they're often brokenhearted idealists is it's armoring it's armoring against feeling your feelings feeling how utterly vulnerable we all are how this is a temporal deal uh uh so but you said the word disheartened and and one of the wonderful things about these kind of conversations and I think why people tune in why do people want this because it's rehe heartening people want something that boys their their their heart and their hope and that's most needed if you're in the darkest time in your life if you're actually struggling or suffering it's easy to talk about how wonderful things are and how creative you can be when everything's going your way but all of this counts Leonardo himself said uh uh uh uh you can navigate uh fix your course to a star and you can navigate through any storm what's that mean it means that if you have a higher purpose if you have a raison Detra then those principles that love of truth beauty and goodness that commitment will will be your North Star will help navigate in times of difficulty this is the Victor Frankle thing well strong enough why will bear anyhow I Happ to have read him when I was 14 years ago which is a really long time and that's part of what set the stage for my whole life and everything I've done since then yeah super interesting and it's like you know the time that I've spent with Neuroscience people like hberman or whatever yeah Sam Sam Harris talking about how almost everything is positive destination move toward the destination track the distance between you and the destination get positive reinforcement move the destination again posit the you know it's this sort of uh like how a you know a cartoon snail moves where it goes like this then goes flat goes like this and then it goes flat um it feels like that and I think we can get disheartened by the adaptation oh how awful the thing that I previously only wished that I could have had the opportunity to say yes to is now something that I take for granted we sort of give ourselves we like whip ourselves because we say well I should be more grateful you wanted this and you got it and now and now you [ __ ] forgotten that you've even had it right but this this comes back to something you said before too about how everybody's work work work and totally focused and even when they go outside they're doing something and we feel we have to justify ourselves and the guilt and the shame the Michelangelo flade body that's pushing you forward to achieve so that well say you're worthwhile and you'll have uh uh some reason for being here versus part of what I love about Italian culture is La do Vita the intrinsic notion that life is is beautiful that life is sweet that we're here to enjoy the the Beauty and the pleasure of just being the French have something similar which is why they just pass that law that you're B can't call you because they have Jah deiv the joy of living so the Italians have Dolce Vita the French have zad deiv unfortunately in the us all we have is happy hour you know one lousy hour where you pound down some some drinks before you go back to your miserable life and try to achieve more uh uh uh but this notion which is also a Dost Buddhist notion about and it's not just a notion I think it's closer to real to what I consider to be truth beauty the source of truth beauty and goodness is being able to be fully present and savoring savoring presence for its own sake savoring The Joy like like what's the most Exquisite pleasure could it be breathing like right now like and you know the apog the Zenith uh uh uh the solstices of the breath the fact that we're connected to everything we all breathe the same breath uh uh that as all sent beings it's all being we're made of the same Cosmic dust and what if we could just get out of our yakity yakity yak and be that even a little part of the time and don't get me wrong I'm you know I am an achiever I'm a maniac uh uh it just I have I've just woken up to okay I don't have to worry like that's my default setting is to work hard and Achieve and be disciplined I just grew up that way so it it's hardwired into my system so the edge for me has been to learn oh how how about just being how about just being present with myself and then try it in relationships just being present with the people that you're with and and and let let something creative emerge rather than you having to think of it through your own cleverness and effort you know that uh idea of us all being connected and I guess if people are deep into meditation they'll know about sort of permanent non- abiding non-dual awareness etc etc um a more rational version of that which I love uh and I've just checked chat GPT to make sure that it's it's still correct uh so I asked the question do we all breathe in particles of Julius Caesar's Last Breath yes it's likely that we all breathe in particles from Julius Caesar's Last Breath because of molecular diffusion and the fact that every breath contains 10 to the 22 molecules while the fraction of Caesar's breath in any given inhalation is minuscule the sheer number of molecules and the passage of time make it statistically probable that every bre breath we take contains some of those ancient molecules how [ __ ] cool is that see but that's that's the such a wonderful element of the amazing time we live in whereas we can we can take these concepts of ancient wisdom from the vadas from you know uh AIT Vidant non-dual truth and things that yogis went off for 40 50 years to get anaha and we can actually back it up with with physics and that that's you know it's like when I tell my my business clients that uh you know we now know we have the data that shows that if you treat all your stakeholders with care and respect and look after their welfare over time you'll make more money we have the data so why would you think of ripping people off or exploiting the worker or your client because you're going to you're going to suffer you're not going to feel good your conscience is going to hurt you and you won't and you you make less money I mean of all of those of all of the things for me it's I think the little ticker in the back of your brain that knows when you did the thing that you should have done that gives you that sort of as the kids would say ick or cringe that sense of like H [ __ ] like I should shouldn't have done that MH and I know I shouldn't have done that and you know adaptively evolutionarily what is it it's you thinking if somebody in the tribe saw what you just did or what you just thought you would you would potentially lose status or you would maybe even be kicked out or killed you know in the worst situations but like functionally what is that well it's you being pointed toward a Direction that's probably good for you over the long term uh it's the same reason that you know we have this tension between pleasure enjoyment and long-term contentment and meaning like it's a tension between the two and a lot of the times stuff that we do in the moment that gives us pleasure can be negative for us over the long term and stuff that's positive for us over the long term is negative to our pleasure in the in the current moment and um I I really think that much of the balance with this like the first step is just realizing this is a tension to be managed not a problem to be solved like there's no [ __ ] equation that comes out the other end it's it's you know I I I'm passionate about wine I I do a wine tasting team building exercises for my clients over the years I wrote a book called wine drinking for inspired thinking and I I got to tell you I've really mastered the art of pleasure every day without negative consequences and one of the great philosophers of wine that I read said the art of enjoying wine is to have the greatest possible present glad gladness without any future misery so I'm enjoying a beautiful wine and it's so good and I'd like to have another glass but I just tune into my system and I know I'll have a headache I won't feel so good I won't be able function at the level just say thanks breathe in and Savor the Aromas and the Afterglow of a of a fine wine and let that be just enough because then you get to have some more the next the next night or whatever it is dark chocolate uh uh I mean I'm I really I'm really focused on all the best things in life and how to enjoy them sustainably to make to more Dolce in my Vita and the Vita of my friends and clients more Jah in their Viv so that every hour will be happier yeah isn't it cool you know like so much of this a couple of the things that You' mentioned there um wine maybe you want a bit more but there's also a bit of you that doesn't want a bit more like Wine's moreful but not that much more moreful dark chocolate's a better example of something where I have never has anybody ever gorged themselves on dark chocolate I don't think so it's like after a while it's sort of been it's so good too that you're fulfilled correct so I think uh what you're there's two ways to sort of look at this uh Temperance maybe would say some sort of self-control um one is develop self-control right uh is to actually have the ability to do the willpower thing so that would be you being able to press the accelerator harder right of willpower but the other one is taking a fot off the break and that would be choosing environments friends routines Lifestyles food choices like the reason that everybody loses weight most of the time when they switch to something like meat and fruit right or carnivore is that there's only so much ground beef you can eat before you're like I'm [ __ ] sick of this whereas The Taste design of going to McDonald's is significantly more palatable so you're going to eat more anyway okay so yeah but what you what you said let's just uh tie that up too because what I find is many people have internalized the Puritan ethic you got to remember the Puritans left England because they they were having too much fun in England and they wanted to be more austere so they came here and they dressed in those funky Black and White costumes that look very tight and uncomfortable and pleasure and and joy of living wasn't their thing so a lot of people feel that they must deny themselves that they don't deserve goodness and the Bounty of Life uh uh other people overdo it and are get addicted and so whichever poll if you're on this poll of overindulgence you need to to tighten up and and get more discipline and learn you know the power of a positive no and if you're one of these folks over here who never really thought that this was possible or didn't know all the Wonder ful things the world has to offer you and once to learn about the art of enjoyment well there's a whole beautiful world awaiting you okay I like to be the guide for those people to ex a lot of my clients a lot of my clients over the years okay curiosity critical thinking next sharpen your senses sharpen your senses so Leonardo wrote that the five senses are the Ministers of the Soul he disciplined his senses he trained his senses like an Olympic Athlete would train their body for competition but you know what he wrote 500 years ago 550 years ago in Tuscany Leonardo wrote the average person looks without seeing eats without tasting breathes in without awareness of a ro or fragrance uh uh talks without thinking basically doesn't pay attention to the beauty that's all around them so he advocates in the principle of Sensi sension Advocates consciously sharpening your sensory awareness and this becomes obviously more important as you get older and what what's the best most beautiful way to do it is to appreciate nature and appreciate Beauty go for a walk and have a theme of what do I see what are the colors I see today let's look at the different shades of green make that the theme of my walk today or my walk today my theme will be perspective or light and Shadow or what sounds do I hear just you know just listening to the sound of bird song in a 20 minute walk significantly raises your immune system and your creative thinking uh taste the best the world has to has to offer and pay attention and oh here's a big secret too instead of one dark chocolate do a comparative tasting try you know an 80% caca against 85% or one from Madagascar against one from Venezuela because your brain loves a theme it loves to compare and contrast F and you'll notice sensory nuances in the chocolate that you might have escaped you had you not compared then you can do the same thing with man and Mona or different uh Pieces by Bach or early Mozart later Mozart or Mozart uh 40th symph Symphony conducted by Von Carion versus Bernstein it's amazing same music it can even be the same Orchestra different conductor you hear stuff that you never would have heard otherwise so and it's fun and then you do this with other people and you say well what did you hear and here's here's the deal to get to make this most fun is no wrong answers this is not you know music criticism or uh uh food criticism this is Sensa enjoyment what because there's no wrong answer to the question what do you experience and what's so cool is people will I do this with my corporate people they'll they don't think they know about wine they put their nose in the glass people make jokes oh that smells like grapes ahaha but you know they get over their awkwardness and they get into it and somebody says something like a uh U I don't know it kind of reminds me of uh biting into a really ripe uh uh Plum uh while leaning back on a hay stack on a really hot day and somebody else goes oh my God that's just let me taste that uh wine again see if I can get that Plum and that hay stack and all of a sudden you're not just learning about the wine you're learning about the person and you're connecting with the poetic soul and the poetic Consciousness the the nonlinear uh way of being in the world which is is Art Joy uh uh uh uh Beauty so if we want more of that in our lives we sharpen our senses not to mention the fact that look my patrons are businesses so they need to be sharper than their competition that means they're better at seeing what's going on they're reading the body language of the person in the meeting they are listening to The Voice tone and noticing if there's a disconnect between the words the person's saying the body language and the voice tonality and then they'll use their cuos to ask some more challenging questions so that they can fire up their uh deos and get to the bottom of the situation so the opposite of being sharp is being dull and it's a sensory term yeah it's this again another one of those balances I I like the idea of the sharpness but but there's also this sort of element of savoring uh which seems you patience kind of I'm going to wait and see what's there or I'm going to take another sip or I'm going to take another moment before speaking or describing or whatever yeah I've been I've been uh that's uh something I've been aiming to cultivate for many years as a as a Wine Drinker I imagine that the savoring thing is is particularly important okay sharpen the senses Sharp is what's next okay the next isato spato soato is a term coined by Art critics to refer to the hazy mysterious quality in Leonardo D Vinci's paintings and what it refers to is maybe the most distinguishing characteristic of Highly creative people which is our ability to embrace the unknown so one of L everybody rushes to see the Mona Lisa and rightfully so because she's the most renowned famous work of art in human history the most recognized symbol or icon or image on the planet but on your way in to see her a lot of people walk right by the St John and the St John in the book is actually the symbol of suato because he's got his hand on his heart he's pointing up to heaven he's got a funky head tilt and and smile as though he's saying when things are really tricky and uncertain use your emotional intelligence consider what your higher principles are and keep your sense of humor so Leonardo pioneered this technique uh which they call S aato where why is the Mona Lisa considered to be so amazing well one reason is she's so mysterious because he he blurs the lines around her eyes around her smile the famous smile he blurs from her figure to the atmosphere behind her so things seem to kind of meld into other things and she seems to follow you around the room if you've ever had the opportunity to actually move around that room when it's not that crowded which fortunately I actually had so what try this we can have everybody can try this all together we do this right now so just imitate Mona's smile get in the position everybody knows it and do your best Mona smile imitation and then notice how it makes you feel that's good man I could have been who right so so uh I was doing this with a group of gifted children uh uh ages 8 to 11 in rahan County Virginia and kids are so great you ask them to do something like this they are so Earnest they go they're really into it and one of the kids says she's got a secret and the other kid says yeah she knows everything has an opposite and then the kids start saying opposites like day and night good and bad boys and girls life and death I asked my average corporate group when we do this I say they say well I read in the Wall Street Journal that the famous smile was caused by a dental problem they kind of missed the point Mona Lisa is the Western equivalent of the ancient Eastern symbol of Yin andang she is the embodiment of the notion of the harmony of dark and light of Good and Evil of masculine and feminine ofin and Y and that's just one of the reasons she's endlessly fascinating it's so interesting I was uh I've watched a number of videos YouTube videos explaining it I think it's a YouTube channel called great great art explained yeah I I I'm on that channel great books explain great art explain un aw so good especially for me right total Philistine no understanding of art or how it works and then you have someone who has to be some sort of art scholar or whatever anyway people should go and check out great art explained and um they do maybe an extended one I think perhaps on the Mona Lisa and um yeah there's you was talking before about uh the particular style to bring light out but wasn't that that was because of the number of layers that he used like this obscene number of like one layer one layer one layer super so gossamer thin layers of paint hundreds of them so what that does is create this effect where the light seems to suffuse from behind the canvas creating this haunting engaging mysterious effect and you know the lesson for all of us is when you're going through a period of big change of grave uncertainty which we will all go through uh uh sometimes over and over again can you maintain your emotional intelligence can you maintain your connection to your star to your higher purpose or principle can you maintain your sense of humor which I find to be perhaps you know the haha and the AHA are first cousins the same workings of the brain it's shifting you out of it's like improv you know improv if we say uh uh uh if we have you you you you did that exercise uh uh where you you name something and then name it the thing of the next thing and then name it something that it isn't [ __ ] love that idea love I was actually I've been doing that I saw that on your episode and I've been doing that on my I was doing it today look at my neighbor's house and I'm saying tree and I'm tree I'm mail godam it my neighbors already think I'm nuts as it is I tried to do this a little quietly but yeah very good okay okay so spato embracing ambiguity in the unknown principle number five arenza arenza integrate Art and Science logic and Imagination what people used to refer to as left and right hemisphere thinking now we know it's actually more complex and not so easily distributed but the metaphor still uh is relevant uh there's convergent thinking where we're focusing analyzing reducing and there's Divergent thinking where we're going off and coming up with random associations uh way back in the 1990s I coined the term sin virgin thinking the synergetic integration of convergent and Divergent thinking that's arenza leonar why do we why are we here talking about him because he wasn't just an amazing genius scientist he also an amazing genius artist and inventor so he integrated these modalities that we usually tend to think of as opposites all in service of his quest for for truth beauty and goodness and my old buddy English uh uh genius guy named Tony buzan originated mindmapping I if you've come across mind mapping it's Tony made it up inspired by the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Edison and he taught it to me when I was writing my Master's thesis in London and it transformed my experience of writing my Master's thesis became my first book and that's how I became an author so it's a methodology for integrating Art and Science artenza it's a really simple elegant practical way to think like Leonardo but my guidance for everybody is learn at first the old-fashioned way with actual colored pens and big sheets of paper before you do it on your computer it's great to do it on your computer it's amazing the programs that have come out a lot of free great ones but learn it the artisanal oldfashioned way because when you draw uh uh uh it activates circuitry in your brain you want some serious neuroplasticity get the colored pens make some mind maps and you will be thinking like Leonardo D Vinci there's a a program for Mac which is free called Mind node um it's not quite it it's more tiered so it's basically uh how would you say like like um nested bullet points but presented visually and uh super easy to use which is the most important thing for me and I love mind node so I use mind node I haven't used it that much recently to be honest but I used it in the past when I was planning out talks and other bits and pieces uh I think one of the certainly if I was to lay an issue or a pathology at the feet of modern society would certainly not be that there's too much art or imagination um you know it's very it's very sort of left brainy it's very rational it's tied in with the cynicism thing uh how can somebody that thinks this sounds great I'd love to inhabit my sort of creative imaginative artistic D Vinci energy more what are some of the things that can help to sort of pull people out in that way well really learning and practicing mindmapping is the go-to's most practical I way to really do it because then you can learn to make mind maps of your uh plan for the day uh you can plan a dinner party you can make a a the last exercise in the book is a mind map of all your life goals dreams Visions values uh your different areas of life and then you get to look at them and see the Gestalt of it all while you also get more detail because you put in keywords you print those keywords so they're easy to read and you draw images or creative Doodles that go with them so you're stimulating the imaginative part of your mind and the detailed focused analytical part of your mind simultaneously so you get a huge amount of information in a in a very small space and it's fun it's fun yeah okay next up next Corporal Corporal balance the body and the mind so we all know that Leonardo was an artistic genius many people know he was also a scientific genius great inventive genius but he was also physically gifted he was renowned as the strongest man in Florence he was a master equestrian a fencer history records that he also was a juggler which I was thrilled to discover since I worked my way through graduate school as a professional juggler he loved to walk uh he walked through the countryside for miles and miles and miles with his with his notebooks and he gives advice in his notebooks to his students remember I told you he actually tells you what to do I just figured out what he was saying translated into contemporary terms one of the things he says learn to preserve your own health today we we might call that integrative medicine or functional Med learn to preserve your own health take responsibility for your health and wellness he says avoid Grievous moods and keep your mind cheerful well today we call that psychon neuroimmunology right your attitude affects your immune system moment to moment he says eat a healthy wholesome diet of the freshest foods that you can find he says if possible dine With Friends the Italians have a saying atava non invea you with others you don't grow old he says have a little red wine with dinner in moderation he says get moderate exercise every day have plenty of fresh water be in nature what else do you need to know so that Fitness looking after the body looking after the mind but there's the the elements of Grace and Poise yes what did those specific specifically because that I think to me is a very different sort of word yes uh uh uh so Leonardo was renowned for his grace and Poise in his own movement he was so the the chroniclers of the time recorded that people would turn out just to watch him walk down the street because he moved with so much Poise and Grace and part of why especially when you go when you go see the drawings I've seen them close up at the ambrosiana in Milan and in Windsor Castle uh and in a few other places with special exhibitions uh uh the grace of the lions that he creates the drapery that he enfolds St an or the Madonna it uh the curls of the hair in the genevra deeni uh which is in the uh uh National Gallery you go see it for free in Washington DC so they're all indicative of this sense of just having the right amount of energy in the right place at the right time which is one of the secrets of life and it's an element that's often missed in a lot of physical training you know people go to the gym and they're trying to just push the most weight they can they want to achieve the goal but you you see these people they're torting themselves they lose their form I see Runners Walkers everywhere doing more harm to themselves them than good because they've lost Poise and Grace in their movement so I trained originally an alexand as an Alexander technique teacher in London many years ago which is a genius methodology for cultivating poison Grace in your everyday movement and Leonardo is one of the Supreme examples of that quality okay and what's the final one coret coret everything connects to everything else Leonardo wrote that in his notebook everything connects to everything else so today we would call that systems thinking looking at how things that you might not ordinarily think are related are actually related like how Julia Caesar is in your in your nose right now so that ability to to really see the big picture to see how just to think things through in a how what are the UN potential unintended consequences the negative un people call them side effects when it's a drug but they're really effects they're just effects so what's the St of this project we're doing what's of this product that we're launching of this plan I am making how do I see he's he guides us he asks us to do that and what I I guide people to try to do that with their own lives is just you know what's your purpose what are your values what are your goals and how do they all fit together and what are you actually doing every day and is what you're doing every day what's out of alignment with what you say your purpose values and goals are and how can you make little shifts I mean I know you know this little shifts uh uh uh every day lead to really big shifts in a surprisingly short amount of time but it helps to not just I'm GNA get fit uh uh uh and you just focus no how do why are you getting fit how are you doing it when are you going to do it where are you going to do it uh uh that fits in with the questions we laid out earlier and asking those questions about every aspect of your life and then you can take these and put them in one mind map and make symbols for each one and some key words put that on your desk I have mine right over there I keep redoing it I've been doing this for a really long time uh uh uh but it helps us stay on track to that star that Leonardo talked about and believe me comes in handy when you have to navigate through storms yeah intentionality uh intentionalism is a word that me and a lot of my friends are pretty addicted to like doing the thing that you mean to do right well that's a positive addiction uh I'm I'm yeah because the default setting is not is programming is condition is reactivity is unconsciousness is somebody else's intention that was set to manipulate you and control your life so set your intention and set it in a systems way and make images that go with it so you're not just doing it linearly but you're also doing it with your imagination and it's plus it's more fun Michael gal ladies and gentlemen Michael awesome I does this new Leonardo da Vinci uh documentary that's coming out I think it'll be out actually once this episode is done so I'm sure a lot of people wanting be wanting to learn more so I really appreciate your work and the uh many trips and pages that you had to go through in order to be able to glean these insights where should people go if they want to keep up to date with the stuff you do thank you uh Michael gel.com that's Gelb Michael gel.com and when they go to Michael gel.com and they sign up for our free newsletter we send them a 14 page handout on how to do mind mapping for free so Michael gel.com is the place to go thank you heck yeah appreciate you Michael thank you thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode there is something else you will absolutely love right here go on give it a tap