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- [00:01]
Host
Hey, welcome to this bonus episode of the Daring Creativity Podcast, where I revisit the interview published earlier in the week. There is so much value in these weekly conversations, and I am so thankful to my guests for sharing their most vulnerable moments. Full of wisdom and knowledge. These bonus episodes are my chance to pick out a few standout moments and zoom in on them for extra value and meaning. And today, I'm going to pick out a few of those from my conversation with Oliver Jeffers that launched just on Monday. And the first one is all about artistic stubbornness.
- [00:36]
Oliver Jeffers
There's other ways to go about getting whatever it is that you want to accomplish, accomplished. And I've thought about that. You know, the stubbornness in a lot of artists, and they're sort of like the rock like mentality of I will not move, I will not bend, I will stay here and say and do my thing and, you know, screw the word for not recognizing my genius. But if you look at a rock that's in the middle of a river, it will eventually get eroded away, whereas the river will find the path through the sea. It'll find its own way. And so I've kind of taken up this mantra to myself of be the river, not the rock.
- [01:11]
Host
I really loved when Oliver mentioned his metaphor of rock and the river, because how many times did you find yourself to be the rock and not the river? This metaphor brilliantly captures one of the most crucial mindset shifts for any creative professional. When you think about it, many artists fall into a trap of rigid thinking. They believe their vision, they believe their vision is perfect, and the world simply doesn't understand their genius. This leads to creative stagnation, sometimes frustration. And Oliver's river metaphor teaches adaptability without compromise. Because rivers maintain their essential nature, they flow towards their destinations whilst navigating around obstacles. They don't fight immovable objects. They find creative solutions. For artists, this means maintaining their core creative vision whilst being flexible about methods, mediums and pathways to success. The psychological insight here is profound because stubbornness often masks fear. Fear of change, fear of being wrong, fear of appearing weak. But a true strength lies in fluid persistence. And the persistence was one of the key words from this conversation. When you're persistent and one gallery rejects you, you find another. When one medium doesn't work, you try another. When one story doesn't resonate, you tell it differently. And the river always reaches the sea, not through force, but. But through intelligent persistence. Here's the second standout moment.
- [02:46]
Oliver Jeffers
But it's not. That's not how it works at all. You've got to work harder or be better than everybody else. And so it is not really this idea of we're all equal, everybody deserves a chance. It just the word simply doesn't operate like that. And I figured out very early on though, around the time of my last year of our college, the greatest secret that I think to being a creative is are actually to being a person is you only get out what you put in. If you want something, nobody is going to do it for you, you have to do it yourself.
- [03:12]
Host
I love following Oliver's career and I enjoy talking to him about how he started and what he did because he mentioned the word which I can't pronounce, which says holy. I can't even pronounce it again. Holy defecation. Where in an era of social media highlights and overnight success stories, we kind of have this fantasy of how people achieve their things. But there's an uncomfortable truth because Oliver learned earlier on a lesson that became the foundation of his success across multiple creative disciplines. And that is that it isn't about work ethic, it's about taking radical responsibility for your creative life. His quote challenges the victim mentality that creators often fall into when they say the industry is fair. I don't have connections. I have advantages that I don't. Some people are from more privileged backgrounds, some people are destined because of their connections. But some of these things might be true, but also excuses them from preventing action. Oliver exemplifies in the principle of his origin story that instead of waiting for someone to discover his children's books, he researched the industry, created a book prototype, printed hundred copies and systematically send them to publishers. He didn't wait for permission or perfect circumstances. He created his own opportunities and reason why. I love this mindset because it resonates with mine. If you ever heard my talks or potentially heard me talking about it on a podcast. I love the quote by Chris Cornell when Chris Cornell said that if he was the best musician in the world and be most into music and practice all the time, then the best band in the world will show up and beg him to play for them. Except that never happened. And that's why he and his mates created Soundgarden. And it kind of makes me believe that what we do, we don't wait for the best thing in the world to come up. So I was bored pitching for podcasts, so I started my own. I never waited for publishing contract. I started my own book publishing company. I didn't want to wait for the best coffee company in the world. To beg me to work for them. So I started my own coffee company. And as you can tell from this mindset, that was one of the reasons why I wanted Oliver to be on the show, to share this, because it's a kindred spirit in them. You can't blame anyone else for your failure. I believe there's so much information and so many opportunities that we can create that we are the ones driving our own destiny.
- [05:43]
Oliver Jeffers
No piece of art that I've ever made. To go back to an earlier question you were saying about. Has actually ever turned out the way that I thought it would in my head before I put pen to paper or brush to canvas. Not a single thing. And there's. You always have to react to what you see. And some people can become very frustrated with that, like it's not looking like it's supposed to, or you can use that as a conversation, which is. That's not what I thought was going to happen. But that is interesting. What happens if I do that some more? And then the work to start to take you in places that you're not in control completely. And I think there's something really fascinating that happens when you get into that conversation with the thing you're making.
- [06:23]
Host
I believe this moment addresses one of the biggest sources of creative paralysis, perfectionism, and the fear of deviations from our mental vision. How many times did you find yourself trying to nail something in a shape? No. Thinking, this is what I'm making. This is what it should look like. This is what it should be. And it's not working. And all we do in is finding the dead ends and dead ends overall and over again. And I feel Oliver just summed up this really well, because it only happened once that he set out to do something, and it turned out a certain way. And that reveals that even highly successful artists never achieve exactly what they envision. And that's actually the point, not the failure. Actually, you end up somewhere just like the river. You find your sort of nooks and corners and go and get to your destination. Because I enjoy hearing that. Because lots of us know his books. They seem perfect, but very little did we expect that they're not always what he's envisaged right at the start. Things change along the way, and for that very reason, I also asked him about the nature of creative work and expression and what sort of things he was channeling for his childhood, for his thinking. And we got onto the topic of how does it influence our perception of creativity.
- [07:50]
Oliver Jeffers
Do you like messy art or do you like Neat art. And they, you know, we were having this conversation and Esther and I both realized, you know, I used to really like neat art, but not I like messy art. And why is that? And is it because in my youth, sort of coming up through the 20s, I was craving control and craving the predictability. Whereas now I have control and predictability to some degrees. I'm missing chaos and so that's why I'm resonating to that. But in my work itself, you do kind of become not a slave, but you enter into a contract with your own ability. And so there's, I'm not interested too much in completely reinventing my style for the sake of it.
- [08:34]
Host
I love this, the messy art versus neat art. Because we all go through stages and our tastes change, our artistic styles change, our expression changes. And in this instance, the observation reveals a profound psychological truth about creativity and human nature and how that extends far beyond our preferences. Oliver articulated something many people experience and rarely examine. We often drawn, we've often drawn to what we lack in our lives. The quote demonstrates remarkable self awareness about how life circumstances influence aesthetic preferences. If you listen to the conversation, he also talks about the fact that he was looking for peace and some space because he was one of four boys in a busy family. And that's what influenced his books by creating books that are more about loneliness. And that's why I wanted to find out from the conversation. It's if there's a link between all of this because now as an established artist with established success, he's got family, stability, predictable routines. He finds himself drawn now to messier and more chaotic art because life gets a little bit less chaotic when you get a bit older. And that sometimes can be seen as a benefit because you can't sustain that sort of teenage chaos or the 20 year old chaos. I think from personal experience it's nice getting older because there's more silence, there's more peace. But I think that chaos that we crave can be found through creative expression, through somewhere else's art, through inspiration. To summarize this, the deeper wisdom here is about honest self examination. Instead of trying to create what we think we should like or what's currently popular. It's about understanding what genuinely resonates with us right now in our current stages of life and why this leads to more authentic creative expression and explains why artists, designers, creatives work, why the work naturally evolves over time. We are not just changing for change's sake, but responding to our evolving psychological landscape. Thank you for joining me on this bonus episode, and I'll see you next week.