Loading summary
Transcript71 lines
- [00:01]
Radi Malinich
Before we start today's episode, let me tell you about my latest adventure. Introducing Lax Coffee Company, a specialty grade coffee company inspired by creativity and creatives. The debut range is sourced from some of the best farms in Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Africa, offering beautiful flavors and notes. Our single origins and house blends are roasted every Monday. For next day shipping, visit luxcoffee.co.uk and use code podcast for 15% off your first order. And yes, there's exceptional merge too. Luxe Coffee Company is where art meets exceptional coffee.
- [00:50]
Luke Lucas
Yeah, I think one of the most valuable things in terms of creativity is the capacity to be bored. I don't think that it really even exists anymore. People don't give themselves the time to do that. Having that boredom is what forces you to entertain yourself in different ways. And I think that's where creativity really blossoms, that kind of environment. I think also with the way that we're consuming content these days and we're not actually consciously choosing where we want to go, it's almost pushed on us. I think that's robbing us an opportunity to steer in a different direction. Like it's funneling us in a particular way. And I don't think that's necessarily healthy either.
- [01:33]
Radi Malinich
Welcome to Mindful Creative Podcast, a show about understanding how to deal with the highs and lows of creative lives. My name is Radi Malinich and creativity changed my life, but it also nearly killed me. In this season, inspired by my book of the same title, I am talking to some of the most celebrated figures in the creative industry. In our candid conversations, my guests share their experiences and how they overcame their challenges and struggles, how they learn to grow as creatives. A creative career in the 21st century can be overwhelming. I wanted to capture these honest and transparent conversations that might help you find that guiding light in your career. Thank you for joining me on this episode and taking the first or next step towards regaining control of your creative life. You ready? My guest today is nearing three decades in the creative industry. From his treehouse studio on the northern beaches of Sydney to screens, billboards and magazines across the globe, he is a world renowned creative specializing in custom lettering, illustration, design and art direction. He is also a passionate meditation teacher and a breathwork facilitator who considers having a dedicated mindful practice an essential ingredient in sustaining his creative career. We discuss his journey from being a workaholic with substance use to discovering meditation. Through his father, he explores how mindfulness transformed his creative practice, personal life and approach to parenting. It's my pleasure to Introduce Luke Lucas. Hey, Luke, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?
- [03:28]
Luke Lucas
I'm doing pretty well, thanks. Thanks for having me.
- [03:30]
Radi Malinich
Oh, you're most welcome. I've been looking forward to speaking to you because you're, I would say, anomaly in our industry, at least from the view that I've got, because I don't know many other designers who'd be also meditation teachers. So for those who don't know you or never heard of you, how would you introduce yourself?
- [03:48]
Luke Lucas
My name is Luke Lucas. I am a freelance creative that lives in the Northern Beaches of Sydney. I have been working in this industry since the mid-90s. I'm also a meditation teacher and I'm a father. That's me.
- [04:07]
Radi Malinich
You mentioned being in the creative industry since mid-90s. You must have seen some shifts in approach to mental health and mindfulness because, I mean, mid-90s wasn't exactly a decade known for mindful approach.
- [04:18]
Luke Lucas
I think the approach to mental health was substances really. Like when I first started off, I guess I had no idea about mindfulness really. I worked very hard and I actually found that through work I was able to find a distraction from my thoughts. So I became a immersed in my work, which did work for me in a good way in the beginning. That established a good work ethic and enabled me to learn a lot more and affect my craft and that kind of thing. But when I stopped, I found that my mind was really busy and I always had to deal with busy minds, even as a teenager. Yeah, I think I learned some bad habits to help to deal with that busy mind outside of work and outside of activity. I knew that if I was skating or if I was playing guitar or if I was immersed in activity, I could find that necessary distraction to find. Yeah, it was a way for me to distract myself from my thoughts. But when I stopped, in particular, if I was trying to go to bed or was alone with my thoughts, that would become quite overwhelming. And one way I'd learned to deal with that was through substances. And that's not a really sustainable technique for dealing with that kind of thing. Yeah, but I guess that was the 90s. That was the beginning.
- [05:26]
Radi Malinich
How would you define a busy mind? Is it something that. Because obviously you mentioned that busy mind slowed down and gave way to your work. So your work helped you to deal with it. But is it something that was with you or your busy mind was with you from a younger age? Or did you start having this busy mind symptoms from teenage years? How did it work?
- [05:48]
Luke Lucas
I guess it's like an anxiety thing, a busy mind is just being trapped in your thoughts in a way, in thought loops. And I guess through meditation and through other practices that I've learned since then, I've recognized that there is a depth to the mind that exists below the thoughts. And that's what the meditation practice is really good for. It allows you to turn your attention inward to these deeper states of awareness that have an inherent stillness to them. And you begin to, I guess through frequency of practice and repetition, you begin to identify with that part of yourself as yourself as opposed to the thoughts. I guess if you don't have a capacity to go beyond the thought you think you are your thoughts, but really you are the witness of those thoughts. And that witness consciousness that you experience through meditation is your true self. Actually, I think vast majority of our thoughts particularly helpful or relevant even to the given moment. And I think it's quite easy to be thinking of the past or worrying about the future. And in doing so, you're missing what's going on right in front of you in the present.
- [06:53]
Radi Malinich
Let me take you back to the beginning of your career or your creative life, because we find creativity sometimes as a refuge, like a sort of shortcut to gratification. Obviously it helps us to detune from the life outside and focus on the work with your creative practice. For those who don't, never heard of you, or haven't followed your work, you've come from magazine culture, that was your first business. And then now you've been very known for your typography, your lettering, all of that stuff, which has been exquisite and I've been found for years. And you find your own really nice corner of the world of the Internet and creativity that's very ownable to you. How did that work? Through working from your early career steps through those phases of magazine and then being a freelancer.
- [07:37]
Luke Lucas
So when I started a magazine with my friend Jamie, when I was at the first year of my tertiary studies at Melton School of Art and I actually didn't have an intention to become a creative, I was just studying for something to do. I was interested in art and I was interested in graphic design, but I didn't necessarily think that was what I wanted to do. And then through the the beginning of the course, me and the friend Jamie decided we'd start a magazine having no real knowledge of how to do, and we begun. And I didn't actually even own a computer at the time, so. So we'd use the computer rooms at school, so we'd study during the Day and then work on the magazine at night. And between Jamie and myself, we did everything for that magazine. We did the photography and wrote the articles and sold the advertising, did the design and layout. And from a design perspective, it was absolutely kind of rubbish. It wasn't a particularly good design project and that I guess we didn't really know what we were doing. But from an exposure to the publishing industry perspective and I guess learning the business of design, not from, I guess that side of design, it was so valuable. And yeah, that was the beginning of my career. So that lasted about three years. I wouldn't say it was a particularly successful business. We actually had a third partner that was a bit of a tangent, but we had a third partner that developed a bit of a gambling habit and he had an issue with poker machines and he ended up gambling away a lot of the advertising dollars from the magazine. So we had this situation where we had to pay for the printing of the magazine and we weren't able to do. So we ended up picking him out, but we were left with this massive debt and we ended up working for many years beyond the life of that magazine to pay that debt off, which sucked. But that was also a valuable learning experience. But yeah, we were working after hours on the magazine, studying during the day and I guess by the end of that first year of school we were absolutely exhausted and we decided to drop out of school. So that was. I didn't even finish that course and I never went. So I'm not trained in design traditionally. I guess a lot of what I've learned has been through experimentation and just diving headfirst in and having a keen, I guess, an interest in design and wanting to know everything I can about it through reading and through observation. So that business started and we ended up publishing eight issues and distributed to 14 countries around the world through that magazine. So that did get some reach, but it wasn't a successful business by any means.
- [10:05]
Radi Malinich
It sounds like you've taken on quite a big chunk of responsibility at quite a really young age. And having someone who's gambling away you're advertising money, that must play havoc with even grown mind because that's a lot of responsibility to actually be. To be left with a dad.
- [10:21]
Luke Lucas
And.
- [10:21]
Radi Malinich
And obviously you mentioned to deal with something like that, obviously the substances come into play or how did you deal with it at that time? Did you have any tools or did you not?
- [10:30]
Luke Lucas
I had no tools at the time, so I guess my tools were substances that I was work. Like I was essentially a workaholic. And I was exhausting myself as a way to quieten the mind. But it didn't work and it was a fast track to burnout. I guess he would say it was not a healthy. I was smoking cigarettes at the time as well. I was smoking a pack a day. I was working my ass off during the day and then getting wasted at night and then rinse and repeat. That was what I did for every day. And it was at a time, I guess I had my 21st birthday and was working like I wasn't really having any downtime either at that time. But yeah, that was the way I began.
- [11:08]
Radi Malinich
Yeah. I think when you describe it, I can relate to it. Not necessarily from the 21st birthday, but there were birthdays when I cried in the chocolate cake because I was just so exhausted. It was just like, I can't go on like this. Which I think that's what I should have thought because I carried on for another few years. Just carry on, carry on, carry on until you realize you can't go on no more. It seems so exhilarating when we get to do something so exciting like creative projects, even though they could be so risky. On example, yours, but it gives you almost like a superpower with like, wait a minute, I wasn't exactly anything a few days ago. Now I'm running a magazine, I'm a designer, I'm running a business. This is something that you're making out of nothing and it just feels out of ordinary. And that gives you almost that fuel to do more, more, more and more until you realize, yeah, I can't do any more of that anymore because it's just impossible. As we talk about 90s and the lack of tools, almost wish that we had some of our wits about us much sooner and actually help ourselves much sooner because it almost seems inevitable that we have to go through and burnouts and stresses and almost like working for ignorance until we realize that there's a better way to do this. Would you agree?
- [12:21]
Luke Lucas
A hundred percent agree. I think you need to be ready for it. Like particularly like at practice, like what I'm doing, which is quite disciplined in a way. You need to be ready to be. For me it was like a non negotiable after I realized that there was a way to experience life without that busyness. It's very hard to go back once you've had a taste of stillness, I guess. But you have to be ready. I think if you're not, then you try it and give up.
- [12:43]
Radi Malinich
I like that you use word stillness and I Want to trace the path from the busy mind to stillness. So at what point did you realize that there is another way and that you can do better? Because I know that it was your dad that introduced you to meditation, Is that right?
- [13:01]
Luke Lucas
Yes. So I recognized early that the substances weren't working for me. So I went sort of cold turkey on that stuff. And that became unbearable in a way. And my dad suggested that I go to this Buddhist meditation center when I was living in Melbourne at the time. And they hold weekly group meditation there. And I thought I'd give it a shot. I had nothing to lose. And I went there with him. And they taught what would be considered a concentrated style of meditation. And I really enjoyed it. And I'm becoming acquainted with a deeper aspect of myself. I hadn't really been in touch with that before and sort of opened my eyes. Maybe there is another way to experience life. It is a concentrated style. So I guess concentrated styles of meditation are require, as the name suggests. They require an element of effort and concentration. And it was quite good in that it helped me to cultivate greater focus, particularly in my work. I could really tune out outside noise and can really focus on what was in front of me. And that did help me to be very present with what I was engaging with at that time. And that's what the practice is, I guess. A concentrative style is where you direct your attention at. It can be something like your breath or something like a flame at the exclusion of everything else. And you find stillness through that concentrated awareness. So that's the nature of that practice. But I did still find that when I wasn't engaged, that. That I still had a busy mind. So it didn't necessarily tick all the boxes, but it did give me a taste of that stillness that existed at a subtle level of awareness.
- [14:37]
Radi Malinich
So when you talk about a concentrated style and the exclusion. So you mentioned it helped your work. What sort of changes did you see when you started actually focusing on your work through this practice? Because we would like to achieve flow states. We would like to achieve that sort of deep focus, you know, and push the overwhelm outside. But we don't always create the right conditions for our work. So we don't necessarily are able to achieve flow states per se. So in your early practice, what sort of change did you see with the work? Because could you find that stillness that we're searching for?
- [15:11]
Luke Lucas
I think flow states are really. That's probably the correct term. That's what I was experiencing. So I'd lose time and I'D be so immersed in my work. Even at the time, I guess I could have been working in a really busy environment and everything else ceased to exist, and I could just become one with whatever I was doing. And that happened relatively quickly, actually. And I think that was probably the biggest shift that I noticed at that time through that kind of a practice.
- [15:33]
Radi Malinich
You mentioned there's a few different categories of meditation. So you started with a concentrated style. What was your progress into what you do now?
- [15:42]
Luke Lucas
So there's a few other styles as well. There's more. A contemplative style of meditation, which is the kind that you might experience in a guided meditation, which is more like a journey. And I did experiment with those styles as well. They're almost like little holidays, in a way, little mental holidays. You can probably find lots of these online, and there's probably apps that do it as well. And I was practicing pretty regularly that concentrated solo. So I was going to the group meditations once a week, and I did some retreats with them. And I bumped into a mate of mine that I used to skate with in the 90s who also suffered from a busy mind when he was younger. And he actually became a meditation teacher. But he was teaching a style called Vedic meditation, which is. It's probably like a third category of meditation where you are initiated into a practice given your own personal mantra. It's a technique that is rooted in Indian culture. And your personal mantra is almost like a. It's not like a mantra as in an affirmation or a word as such. It's more of a frequency. So the way that your nervous system interacts with this particular frequency, it excites you. It has a natural kind of gravity to it, and it draws your attention inward to more subtler and subtler states. And the deeper your attention goes, the broader your. It's like a deep and expansive stillness. I'd say the deeper you go, the more stillness you begin to experience. And it's almost like it's capitalizing on the mind's natural kind of tendency to search for what is most appealing. And the deeper you go, the more content your mind is. And through that contentedness, you experience greater levels of. I guess the mind ceases to search for something interesting because it's experiencing something that's more and more interesting. And along with that comes out like a contentedness that brings stillness, if that makes sense. It's sort of like a byproduct of stillness. But you begin to recognize that stillness is always there beneath all the noise. It grants you distance from the noise, but you're still able to interact with that noise, but you have more control over. You can choose which thoughts you want to engage with by having that distance. It gives you the ability to discern what's useful and what's not, what's relevant and what's not. And that allows you to be less reactive and able to respond more dynamically to what's actually important.
- [18:05]
Radi Malinich
Yeah. How would you define a word mantra?
- [18:08]
Luke Lucas
So mantra is based on two Sanskrit words. Manas, which is the Sanskrit word for mind, and tra, which is like a tool. Some people refer to it as like a mind vehicle or a mind tool. And there are different types of mantras. So there are some mantras that have an inherent meaning to them. And by using your mantra, you are trying to cultivate a particular quality. Or some mantras are associated with different sort of deities, or you might be trying to cultivate a quality associated with that. Whereas the practice that I do, the type of mantra is what's known as a bija mantra or a seed mantra. And it has no inherent meaning. It's not in the way that it's used like in other practices it might. But the way that we use that mantra, or the mantra that you're initiated in has no meaning of, has an energetic quality and a vibration to it, but it can change. The mantra can change in your mind in the way that it presents. And practice is more about directing your attention to that and allowing it to do. It's almost like a surrender practice. You're directing your attention to this mantra and allowing it to present how it presents. And if you find yourself in a thought, once you recognize that, you just bring your attention back to your mantra. And that's the process of going in and out, of recognizing that you're no longer with your mantra and then going back to your mantra.
- [19:31]
Radi Malinich
I like a description that try and find a stillness away from the noise. Because we live in a world full of distractions. And I feel we getting more of them, more of them. Like, wherever you look, whatever you do, like, it's just been any distraction that was at 10 already is. Now it's dialed up to 11. It just feels like we are making our lives a lot more difficult than it could have ever been. In a way, it's more exciting and from a capitalist perspective. If you want to see the end of dopamine addictions or, like success addiction, obviously we've got more and more that we can do, and we can see what other people do more and more and more yet I think in what you describe and it seems to me like we actually get in the way as far as we can from our stillness unless we really work on this. So how would you define distractions?
- [20:16]
Luke Lucas
We'll be back after a quick break.
- [20:19]
Radi Malinich
If you're enjoying this podcast and would like more support and information on your creative journey, you can pick up one of my books to help you do just that. My titles cover branding, graphic design, illustration all the Way to Career business advice with ideas how to navigate navigate the highs and lows of the creative process. You can pick up signed paperbacks at no extra cost from my store@nobmberuniverse.co.uk and we are shipping worldwide use code podcast for extra 10% off your order and you can find the links in the show Notes Any day should be a new book day.
- [21:03]
Luke Lucas
I guess if we allow ourselves, we can pretty much exist in a perpetual state of distraction. I think that particularly with the advancement in technology in the iPhone, having that thing in your pocket, which for most people is an addiction and it is the source of so much about numbing, people use it to numb. So the social media scrolling, doom scrolling is a form of numbing and people use it for even like scrolling through the news. People develop porn addictions or video game addictions or there's an abundance of distractions out there and all of those things distract you from yourself. And if you are in that kind of constant state of distraction where you're going from one thing to the next without actually experiencing that stillness, I think it makes you for one thing, I think it makes it a lot much harder to find inspiration. It's much harder to recognize and be in touch with your intuition. And it makes you much more easily manipulated too. I guess if you don't have that kind of tether to true self, you go wherever the wind takes you. And particularly as a human, I think you need to find stillness just to be able to be true to yourself and be a better person. But as a creative, I feel like to be clear and receptive to creative inspiration is such an important part of our job. And if you're unable to find a way to do that, I'm not saying meditation is necessarily right for everyone, but I feel like some kind of a way to experience stillness away from distractions is a really important part of being or to be able to do our job. You need to be able to experience that.
- [22:43]
Radi Malinich
I think I like your point on inspiration because a lot of people will put their hand up if you ask them do you use social media for inspiration? Yeah, of course, like scrolling. But what you said beautifully is a tether to your true self. We don't always know at the beginning what our true selves are because we are still mature and we still are brewing. We're fermenting, developing of who we actually want to be. So to use a distraction from actually finding your true self, you can easily spend time online trying to work out what makes you excited or what you want to be or what career want to emulate. So it's almost like we dip the carrot in this addictive substance and go look for what you want to be. But watch out, it's impossible because obviously our generations and I don't want to sound like a boomer because we not. But we lived a life more mindfully because we didn't have the extra levels of noise in a way. Like I'm always using the joke by Des Bishop who said, when I was younger, I was always mindful because I was on a bus staring at the conversation. Mindful I was doing this, I was standing in the queue. Mindful because you had nothing else to do. In a way you could be thinking over your. No, you have your thoughts with you, you do that stuff. But you don't have the way to escape the present moment by saying, okay, what just happened in the news in the last five minutes? Or has anyone posted a new comment to my LinkedIn post that didn't exist, whereas we have it all now.
- [24:11]
Luke Lucas
Yeah, I think one of the most valuable things in terms of creativity is the capacity to be bored. I don't think that it really even exists anymore. People don't give themselves the time to do that. Like I can see it with my kids, they find it very hard not to be in with a device or with a TV or with video games and their friends do too. And if you drive past any bus shelter or train station and look at what the kids are doing, they're all got their faces down in their devices. And I guess when we were kids, and I don't want to sound like an old bart, but you used to look out the window and look at what the birds were doing. I think having that boredom is what forces you to entertain yourself in different ways. And I think that's where creativity really blossoms, that kind of environment. I think also with the way that we're consuming content these days and we're not actually consciously choosing where we want to go, it's almost pushed on us. I think that's robbing us of an opportunity to steer in a different direction. Like, it's funneling us in a particular way. And I don't think that's necessarily healthy either.
- [25:15]
Radi Malinich
I think it was Brian Solis who once said that information overload is our own choice. It's a symptom of our choices. We can choose what we do. But again, I remember Tim Cook did an interview with Dua Lipa on her podcast, and he said she asked him, like, these devices are very addictive. And he said, I'll be doing something about it. I'm like, wow, what is it, Tim? He says, oh, yeah, we give people the notification center. We give them people the time. I can't remember the exact what the tool is called, but, like, it gives you the overview of how much time you spend on your phone, which is apparently gonna make you more aware of the time you spend and therefore spend less on time on your phone. But that's like giving heroin to heroin addict, going, when your teeth fall out, remember you've gone too far. Like, it's just very, very addictive. And when you see, as you just said, kids sat on the bus shelters, people on their phones, on the trains, in pubs, we are scared about. Sorry, that's generalization. But it feels like we are almost scared about being in the present moment because something's happening. The levels of micro communication that we've created now didn't really exist, but because everyone else is doing it, it's maybe hard to instigate some sort of change because everyone's got good intention. We agree that these companies that are monetizing our attention on their platforms, they're not necessarily malicious, but unfortunately, this is where we ended up with this initially unregulated world. And this is what we've got, because there's no manual for social media. So boredom is a very good word that you said, because it's so easy to be addicted to your phone, especially what's in it, what's outside it, a friend, what's in our world. So finding your true self and inspiration outside all of this might one day be a true art just to connect to yourself.
- [27:00]
Luke Lucas
Yeah, it's interesting here. Here in Australia, they've just passed legislation to ban social media. And I'm not sure how they'll enforce this, but ban social media for children under 16 to be a bit of a game changer if they can pull it off. But I don't. I don't actually know how they'll manage with that. I was asking my youngest son, who's 12, about it this morning. I said, how do you feel about that? Because he hasn't got a social media account. And he said he's quite relieved that that's happening, so maybe it'll work for that generation. But I think the ones that are deep in it right now that use it as a way to particularly like Snapchat and the way they communicate these days, it's the way they interact with one another. I wonder if they can work out how to do that without those tools. See them when they get together and they'll be sitting at a table or whatever, but all be sitting there with their phones, even though they're right in front of each. They're looking at their phones. Yeah.
- [27:50]
Radi Malinich
I think in the UK government, I think it's called the wind of that. I think they start talking about something similar. But yeah, let's see. Maybe a little too late, who knows? Because it's just because you've given a very immature mind something so addictive, which is psychologically known, it's so addictive that that can change. Not neural pathways and change how they see life and future. But you once said that the perpetual distractions are sort of wave living through suffering, almost like a discomfort of being. Would that be ancestorial or is it the contemporary discomfort of being? How would you define this? Is it something that we've always had?
- [28:30]
Luke Lucas
I think it's part of being human. There's like an element of. And Buddhists are well aware of this, aren't they? Kind of. I think there's an element of suffering in life that always exists. And to be able to distract yourself from that is appealing. I get that. And that's why people get pissed. And one of the reasons some people do it for us just to have fun as well. But I guess a lot of the time it's a form of escapism, isn't it? Escaping reality. And yeah, there is a way to exist beyond the. I guess a lot of the suffering is in not being able to be present. I think if you're able to be present, suffering is reduced in a way because you're not worried about the future in the same way, or you're not obsessing about what could have been done better in the past or allowing yourself to be a victim in the same kind of way.
- [29:18]
Radi Malinich
It makes sense when you say that people try to mask the question. They think they will get the answer in the drink, but lets them forget the question temporarily. Because I think what you use as a tool, as a meditation to get away, let's say, from the Discomfort of being the suffering. It seemed like the right way to do it because obviously if you do it the other way, which is obviously masking the problem for a short while, only multiplies and it gets out of control. Because when you talk about tethering yourself to your true self, it's sometimes hard to even know that we are actually having a problem, that we're living in a suffering. Because we just feel that society. You see so many people in a similar situation that you think maybe that's just how we are. This is how it's been almost like imposed from some older times. Like how we both brought up not always people actually worked on themselves. Therefore we didn't necessarily knew, we didn't necessarily know how to get out of these sort of situations, how to get out of these sort of states of mind. So I think we've asked more present enlightenment about how we actually can deal with these things is definitely a way forward. Because obviously you must have seen how your meditation practice has totally changed the way you work, you know, the way you live and how you operate a hundred percent.
- [30:38]
Luke Lucas
If I look back at myself prior to this practice, I had no idea there was another way of being. And when you think about your mind being the filter of everything you experience, it makes sense. If you think about. If everything you are experiencing is filtered through that mind and that mind is in an anxious state, then that kind of taints every experience with that anxious state. Or if you're in a depressive state or everything is tainted, it's not a true experience. So you don't recognize that there is any other way because it's all being experienced through that same kind of filter. But when you get a taste of what it can be like, that becomes quite or it's a relief. It also becomes addicted. You want more of that because it feels so right and true. And it helps to peel back the layers a little bit and see what really is.
- [31:25]
Radi Malinich
What would you say to someone who says I don't have time to meditate? If you say there might be another way, you can try this and that. And I think a lot of times, I think meditation is seem like almost a lot of effort. Okay, what do I need to do? Like, how do I get into this? Because it's pretty much like all the other things we do in life. You can't just sit back, relax, and within five minutes being in total Zen as you've been describing. So many layers of unresolved issues and so many layers of things that we've been dragging with us for years and years and years. So it takes time to cut through it. You're not going to run, I don't know what's the speed for a mile, whatever. But to be a good runner, it takes a while to be a good swimmer, takes a while to be a good artist, takes a while to be a good meditator, takes a long time to do it properly. So what is your normal sort of reaction to people who, if you tell them you meditate and they would like to try it, what is the skepticism or what is the pushback or what would you tell them that is the sort of breakthrough barrier?
- [32:22]
Luke Lucas
So I guess most people will say they're too busy to meditate. And they're the same people that will spend three hours a day on social media as well. I think it's about, are you happy with the way you are living at the moment? Do you want something to change? To change the habit of being yourself requires a level of effort. And particularly if you've got some deep ingrained patterns of behavior that you've developed over many years, it does take some effort. And all I can say is that it may seem like you don't have time, but what you'll find when you begin a practice like this is that you become way more efficient. And the way that you use time is way more effective. And in my experience and what I've seen in my students as well, they have way more time to do what they want to do because they're not obsessing about things that are irrelevant. They're able to engage more fully with what they're dealing with at that time. They're more available than either that time. So that makes everything move more efficiently and effortlessly.
- [33:29]
Radi Malinich
I like your answer that people say they are too busy to meditate, but yet they spend three hours on social media. Exactly.
- [33:35]
Luke Lucas
You can see it. And that's where the distractions come in. If you're like constantly, that is a practice in itself. Like, I make a conscious effort to leave my phone at home. If I go for a walk or if I'm working, I'll put my phone out of reach. Just simple techniques you can use to make it short circuit. That kind of instinct to pick up the phone. And every time you do that, you lose like 10 minutes. If it's distracting your train of thought or creative work, it's like momentum base. You get into a groove and if you break that groove, then you go back a few steps. And if you're able to just focus on your task and Allow it to evolve without distraction, you'll be able to get through that task much more quickly.
- [34:13]
Radi Malinich
I sometimes feel like the modern life or modern creativity, modern business is like a double edged sword because you can be anything you want to be. Like, you can reinvent your life, you can reinvent your career, you can do that. But it's almost like we've got too many options now. Like we don't have too many gatekeepers stopping us from doing so many different things. So having that option to almost cop out, okay, I can finish this project on time or I can actually just pick up my phone and check if that someone replied. I'm waiting on the reply and stuff. Because when you think about it, a phone was originally developed so we can have calls outside our house. We used to have a landline. So now I've been like, okay, you can make a call from your car, whatever, from a bus stop. And now we've got phones in our houses that basically we just use them as a sort of microcosm of the hyperconnected world. Looking at it, going, what have I done? Because yeah, I can put my hand to heart that currently I'm so addicted to my phone, but not even getting anything really useful out of it. That's the problem. It just, you do these rounds and you're like, okay, sometimes you're winning, sometimes you're not. And sometimes thinking like, I need to be better. So it's just, my technique is just to stick it as a camera on the monitor. Like using the end of the day just. And forgetting about it. It just, even that little tweak really works. But how often do you meditate and how do you make time for it and how do you tell those people who don't have time to meditate? How do you tell them how you do it?
- [35:32]
Luke Lucas
For me now, I guess meditation is like brushing my teeth. I don't do it, I just feel gross. So I definitely do two practices a day and I do a lot of breath work as well now. So I chop and change between the two and I am quite disciplined in that. I know that I feel shit, but I or shitter if I don't do a practice. So I just do it and it's a non negotiable. I guess in the beginning it required discipline, but the more I've done it over the years, it's more of a devotional practice. It's me looking after myself and I know that it's nurturing. That practice makes me feel better. And that's something worth asking too like if you have been sitting on your phone for the last half hour, zoom scrolling. How do you feel after that? Do you feel like something's been taken away from you or do you feel like you've gained something from that? Becoming more aware of how things make you feel can also help circum your behavior a bit.
- [36:24]
Radi Malinich
I think it's a really good way of looking at it because I don't think we ever think about a transactional value because we make it a platform more valuable by spending time on it. But we don't get much back from me that's very, very right. I think it was once to describe one of the techniques as beneficial as sleep. I think that's one of the techniques that can give you as much refreshment as the whole sleep. And I once did one session of yoga, Nidra, and I kid you not, I woke up the next day. Cause it's a sleeping meditation. And I woke up the next day and my mind has never been emptier. I just never felt lighter in my head. It was almost unthinkable. I couldn't really join the doors because yes, I was mostly asleep through the class. But somehow how the class was conducted and what it did makes you realize how much heaviness we carry around. It just blows your mind. Literally blows your mind. But from the stillness perspective, because I was empty and I was just literally like pining to feel that again because I was unbelievably beneficial and refreshing.
- [37:30]
Luke Lucas
Yeah, I think we're in a chronic stress and fatigue epidemic. I think everyone's not sleeping enough. And sleep is really the only way if you don't have a stillness practice, the only way to decompress and deal with the effects of that stress response and accumulates over time. So it's almost like in meditation practice, if you think of your mind almost like a forest that can, without attending to it, can develop a lot of crap on the ground that makes it easily can ignite. Just quite a relevant kind of analogy here in Australia where we have bushfires, forest fires, part of the preventative tactics used by the emergency services to do they burn off all the deadfall and the leaves and stuff to allow it to have some kind of resilience to a spark that might cause a massive bushfire. And meditation is a way of clearing that clutter so that you have greater resilience to things that might set. Typically set you off. And yeah, so having a way to deal with that accumulation of stress without sleep. And Nidra is really good for that too. Like you mentioned yoga Nidra, I think having even if you might have stayed, you were asleep, but maybe you were just in a deeply restful state, which is super valuable. We need more of those. Like we need to experience that more. That's where we repair for example, with sleep.
- [38:48]
Radi Malinich
We call it sleep hygiene, but obviously it's. Our brain gets a hygiene basically like all the crap from the brain is drained back up when we're asleep. In the meditation state is it's. Do we emulate that? Does it have a sort of chemical reaction in our bodies or is it mainly about the mind or is there actually physical aspect to it?
- [39:05]
Luke Lucas
No, it absolutely works on a chemical level. It's one of the most effective ways to deal with excess cortisol and immune system. And yeah, so on a chemical level of meditation is super effective in the same way that deep sleep is. Or even they say it's more so more effective than sleep and it actually improves the quality of your sleep. Having a meditation practice as well. You're able to drop into deeper states of sleep more easily. And it's interesting, I wear a, an aura ring which is measures sleep quality and that kind of stuff among other things. But it recognizes when I'm meditating as well. So I can see where my heart rate drops to a really low level and my body temperature increases and my heart rate variability increases during a practice. So they're all positive markers of how my body's responding to that in the way that sleep does similar things.
- [39:55]
Radi Malinich
So how do you now balance it with your creative work? Because you have officially become a meditation teacher three years ago and you run online sessions and do you teach in person as well?
- [40:06]
Luke Lucas
I do both, yeah. So I'm still a full time designer. So that's what I do for the bulk of my living. And I love that. I still love that job. I love teaching as well. So I did both. But normally I do the meditation stuff after hours. So I'll do that on weekends, so I'll do that in the evenings. But yeah, that's just balance between the two. I've been advertising it a little less lately, just been more responding to personal interactions. When someone's interested, if that's having a chat and I'll do a course with them as opposed to like actively pushing it too hard. Just yeah, I kind of mix it up.
- [40:38]
Radi Malinich
I think that makes perfect sense actually having someone who's not properly interested to actually come to you and start with a curious and inquisitive mind rather than trying to convince the people on Social media watching and scrolling and clicking on Netflix to say, hey, yeah, actually how about this? Because from my personal experience, like I have rediscovered meditation in my early 30s after really horrific burnout. And it was the way to find a peace in my life. Like some of the pieces, I'll rekindle them and connect back with myself because I was just in a constant. And this is actually almost pre social media, like I was actually on a constant treadmill because we just got behind and the numbers were coming up and haven't got enough followers because it's unregulated. It just comes out. We don't know how to deal with it. And when I talk about meditation and when I talk about being in present moment, people are like sometimes seen as a lot of efforts to get into. It's a lot of work. Whereas when you think mindfully, when you think of like, how can I just help myself to even just answer a phone call. I know that people make fewer and fewer calls these days. When you could see, okay, there's a feedback session or I've got three bar sessions with my clients so much as to take like a few good decent breaths and actually exhale it and let's say do like a past lip breathing, that kind of stuff. You're preparing yourself for what's to come. Because when it comes to sports, we stretch a bit before and after we do things right, we have our sort of clear out that there's not. There's a lot of knowledge around how you can help yourself. Not to break yourself real quickly, but it's almost that just even convince people to do that just a little bit on the way to somewhere. Seems like uphill battle. Because every time I give someone a copy of Mindful Creative or someone reads it, they'll be like, oh, I wish I read this book much sooner. And it says in the book, if you're thirsty, you're already dehydrated. If you need help with mental health, you're already in trouble. It's the question is, how do you anchor yourself so you don't drift away too far? Yet it comes almost like sort of pharmacy effect. Okay, I've got a headache. What tablets can I take? What can I do now? And I think so most work that you do and the word you've been spreading, I think for those who pay attention is an incredible way to actually understand. What can you do with your current state with. How can you, as you said, find better intuition, inspiration and more stillness? Because we chat a lot of shit about this sort of Stuff when we busy, we blame on everything and everyone. Like we don't look after ourselves. We think that we can approach slow state just by showing up like, how's your life? Not in tatters. How's your bank balance? Bad. How's your eating habits? How's your sleeping habits? Not everything's bad. But what you expecting today? Oh, magic, of course. I'm expecting flow state, you know, from nine till five and you're like, no, it doesn't work that way. So yeah. With the work that you're doing and spreading, is there daily bits that you have in between or did you say you've bookended in your life that you do meditation in the evening or do you have any helpful tips on like how you can bring that sort of practice in a daily sort of doses?
- [43:42]
Luke Lucas
I think the more you do practice like meditation, the more self aware you become of what's working for you and what's not. I know that I've got a toolkit of things that I use throughout the day. Like you mentioned, if I'm going into a feedback session, I've got certain breath practices that I might do prior to that so that I'm establishing myself in a good state. Breath work is actually really immediately effect that it gives you. Like it's different to meditation in that it's very instantaneous in that it can calm down your nervous system if you are feeling like a little concerned about particular confrontation. Even if you're like in an extreme partner state, like a panic attack or something. Meditation wouldn't work for you. You can't meditate your way out of an anxiety attack, but you can breathe your way out of it. And learning what tools work for you. I do a combination of things. I'll move my body in certain ways, I'll do exercise, I'll do breath work, I'll do meditation. All of these things are all tools that I can use at different times of day and different situations that help me to be the best I can be at that time. So it's just a matter of working out what works for you and having an awareness of what you need at any time to be able to do what you need to do.
- [44:49]
Radi Malinich
If you allow me, I would love to talk about your toolkit because you said you move in a certain way. You can't meditate yourself out of a panic attack. I know that sadly from personal experience. I mean, I laugh now, but obviously I wasn't laughing then. In your toolkit, obviously we talk about feedback sessions and all of that stuff. So what's in it? And could we start with breath work? Because I'm interested in what would you do?
- [45:10]
Luke Lucas
There are different breath practices. You can either use it to activate if you're feeling fatigued, or you can use it to balance if you're feeling a bit off, or you can use it to sedate if you're feeling too heightened. And there's all different techniques that I guess could vary depending on what you're trying to do and how much time you have as well. That an example of a sedating one is where any kind of breath practice where the exhale is longer than the inhale and one that I use all the time is a three part breath called three nine, six, where you inhale the three counts, you hold for nine counts and you exhale for six counts. And you can do that for even three or four minutes. And you'll notice that you really can calm down quite quickly. So that's quite a helpful practice to do if you're about to go into a situation that will be quite intense. That really, really calms down your nervous system. And there's another one of the physiological side that I've heard Andrew Huberman talk about, which is supposed to be one of the more effective in that state where you do a deep inhale to a relatively full lung and then you sip in a little bit extra and then you do a long exhale. And that works in a similar way where there's a really long exhale, a shorter inhale. So that an example of a sedative practice where in an activated practice is like there's a breath practice called Breath of Fire, which is quite a rapid breath practice. And it's focusing on the exhale, but in short bursts. Sort of probably can't see me because it's not a video podcast, but it sounds sort of like a controlled hyperventilation. It creates a lot of heat and energy and it can wake you up. That's another example of breath practice.
- [46:49]
Radi Malinich
So in your toolkit, what else is in there apart from breath work?
- [46:54]
Luke Lucas
Um, well, a good grounding practice is just being barefoot on the earth. And I'll sometimes go out cause I work from home in a studio out the back of my house. And I'll just go outside barefoot and rake leads, which sounds really boring, but it's really grounding as well. And I quite enjoy that. If I'm feeling like a I just need to get away from my screen and I need to move my body and I'll do that even if it's for Five minutes. That's really effective to me. I live near the beach so I try and jump in the ocean. I do laboring work as well on the side sometimes because our job is quite sedentary. Being designers, you spend hours on end sitting down. I'll sometimes do a few hours of laboring. I've got a good builder friend that always needs an extra pair of hands. So I'll. I'll do that for four hours every few days. This keeps me fit and healthy and it all helps.
- [47:43]
Radi Malinich
That's extraordinary what you said. Obviously it's a perfect way to balance things. But in order to be a tradie on the side, that's pretty impressive. But what you have behind you, what people can't see is actually one of my most favorite photograph of the ocean which is behind you, which looks like a black granite. I don't know the name of the photographer. Is it Brian someone? I don't know who it is, but that sort of stillness of the ocean that I feel like it's the mid rolling swell. But what we see sometimes with creativity especially how I'm trying to explain in my talks in my book that we expect creativity to be that sort of calm lake with no ripples, with sunset, beautiful sunset. Like we think that we can just sit and just do our sedentary work kind of uninterrupted with plenty full of good tunes and good coffee and don't expect any sort of kryptonite to show up because we got our superpowers. But creativity is like that ocean. Like sometimes it's calm but sometimes it can just wipe you out. Can you least expect it? And you're like, how do I deal with that?
- [48:42]
Luke Lucas
I think it's particularly like as an industry, it's pretty, pretty toxic and not very conducive to creative inspiration. It's highly stressful. If you're working for an agency, the chances are you're not paid very well and you're working very hard. As a freelancer like myself, I don't know what I'll be working on in a few days from now. It's literally like that fast things come in and out and yet I still have weekly bills that I need to pay. And stress is like the. If you have a spectrum, it's the opposite end of the spectrum of creativity. It's a very narrow and restricted state. And creativity is an open and expansive state. And I also believe like you can't think your way into an idea either. I feel like ideas visit you and you need to be Able to be receptive, to recognize those ideas. And if you're in a stressful state, only the very loudest ideas will get through. You won't experience the subtle. And I think in order for us to be able to not only complete our job, you obviously need to be able to do your job efficiently, but to be able to be inspired, you really need to be able to experience the subtle, to recognize those ideas at the earliest stages before they disappear.
- [49:54]
Radi Malinich
So you mentioned that you don't always know what you're going to work on in a couple of days time, which means there's a high turnover of clients. And of course you might have some sort of regular magazines and publications you work with. But through being a freelancer, you come across a lot of different people a lot of time. Like there's no set style, just like we talk about, there's no set manual for social media. There should be a sort of common idea how we should be exercising creative briefs and projects and how should they should be delivered. But people different, there's different cultures, there's different habits. How do you find it? Obviously working with sort of high frequency turnover of people and just almost tuning in into their style and how much do you need to change or do you need to change your way of working or do you try to work in your style or work in your way that helps you to deliver easier and quicker?
- [50:41]
Luke Lucas
It's really so varied. I mean, I've been a freelancer since 2011, so I've been working this way for quite a while now. It's not for everyone, I'll be honest, but it really suits. The main reason why I went into it in the beginning was because I just become a dad. I wanted the flexibility to spend more time with my children. And I didn't know if it was gonna work. But yeah, you do work with all kinds of people and you're there to serve them in a lot of ways. So I think you need to be mindful of that. When you're dealing with people, you're there to help them realize. And yeah, I guess if they're coming at you with all kind of stress and anxiety, part of my job is to balance that out as well and reassure them that everything's going to be fine, because it can be. I try not to get too sucked into other people's stuff. And that's part of the beauty of working essentially on my own in this space that I'm in right now. I don't have to deal with, I can limit what I deal with. In the outside world quite a lot. So even if I am working with a creative team in an advertising agency or different people in a publishing house or whatever, I'm exposed to them during a briefing, and then I have nothing to do with them until the next time I have to send over a piece of work. I can really just focus on what I need to do.
- [51:55]
Radi Malinich
I found from my own personal work, as in working on myself, that you start spotting particular characters and patterns that in early stages of career can derail you. You're thinking, oh, shit, do I need to change everything? Am I doing the right job? Is this going well? And then you realize, it's got nothing to do with me. Their panic and their free card is about accounts, about deadlines from something else. It's got nothing to do with me. I just found myself in the crossfire of other people's mismatched emotions and as you said, them being trapped in their own noise or their noise on the other side. This is why when we start talking about benefits of meditation and benefits of actually working on ourselves, you find that not only, as you said, you unlock inspiration in a different way, but also you unlock understanding how to deal with other people. Because most of the problems that we take on as freelancers or creatives that we've taken on very personally, they've got nothing to do with us.
- [52:49]
Luke Lucas
Nothing with us. And I think also you develop a resilience, more of a resilience, you become less reactive and you can recognize, like someone might say something that could potentially be quite hurtful, but before it blows up, you're allowed to. You can recognize that's just them and nothing to do with you. Whereas if you record your thoughts, you might just explode in response to that and throw fuel on that fire. And that's not gonna help anyone. So, yeah, it does work in a lot of ways. It helps you to see the person behind the hurtful comments. It also helps you to recognize what thoughts that you might have in response to that are actually useful in that situation.
- [53:28]
Radi Malinich
Since you talk about resilience and hurtful comments, let's talk about being a parent. Let's close this conversation with a parent. How has your work and life changed when you became a dad and starts. Obviously you said you started freelancers because you became a dad, but life of a parent freelancer is different to just to be in a freelancer in your early 20s, when you can do anything, you can smoke yourself to sleep almost every day. But how has your work changed and how do you find a balancing of Work and life and responsibilities. How did you find benefits in being parent and did you find any challenges in there?
- [54:05]
Luke Lucas
I think it's definitely been the most profound thing in my life. Becoming a parent. It's changed the way I look at the entire world. And it's such a privilege to watch a human grow from scratch and seeing what they are drawn to and seeing how completely different they all are. I've got two boys and they're completely different from one another. My youngest is right into heavy metal and whereas my oldest is like right into sport. And there couldn't be any different from each other. But there's a mutual love and respect for each other that helps me to want to be a better person by being their parent and being a positive role model for them. And so my experience as a parent and a freelancer has changed as they've gotten older. One's 14, one's 12 now, but when they were younger, they were home all the time. So I would, I would change my working habits to be available to them when they wanted to interact or hang out. So that might mean that I was working later in the evenings than I do now. Now they're at school day, so I can essentially work a full work day. But I still, I want to be able to take them to school. I want to be available to them when they get home from school. And that's important to me. And I really think that the benefit from having an available parent, I'm always available to them and I think that's a great thing for them. And they're as a growing human and growing young men.
- [55:19]
Radi Malinich
I remember when people ask if you're a parent, doesn't get any easier. No, it doesn't. It just gets different. I think that's the whole thing, and I think that's going to summarize is also creative career. Like, does your creative career gets easier? Does delivering projects become easier? Not always. It just becomes different because you always come with some sort of obstacles. You always come to drive up to some walls and you're like, okay, I need to overcome something. Because if it was that easy, we would lose interest. Like, this wouldn't really. Wouldn't work 100%.
- [55:48]
Luke Lucas
We're in the problem solving business. So, like, that's our playground. We were presented with a challenge and we need to come up with a solution for that challenge. And there's always a new challenge. And yeah, I've been doing this for a long time and I'm not bored at all. There's always a new brief there's always a unique new playground to play with.
- [56:04]
Radi Malinich
I truly admire what you do because I haven't had a fair share of working in a similar field, doing similar work for quite a while, and I think I find a natural, the next step in my career. But it always makes me super happy to see that you just keep going and you keep getting better at it. From my technical perspective of like, how did he do it? Why is he doing this? What is that? Because you go see always to find something different, I think, you know, I'm sure you tethering yourself to your true self, finding that deep inspiration, finding that stillness, I think kind of shows that maybe you found a key to longevity in a career, that sometimes we blame the work, sometimes we blame the creativity, whereas you find the answer within yourself to make sure that you can show up to all of us that actually the work is not a problem, it's actually us.
- [56:52]
Luke Lucas
Yeah, that's definitely not the work that's the problem. It's the way we respond to it. And I think that's the only thing we can control, is how we respond, and everything else is outside of our control.
- [57:02]
Radi Malinich
Dude, keep doing what you're doing. It's inspirational. Your meditation stuff is inspirational and I thank you for your time today. Thank you.
- [57:09]
Luke Lucas
Thanks. Ring Cheers. Foreign.
- [57:22]
Radi Malinich
Hey, thank you for listening to this episode of Mindful Creative Podcast. I'd love to know your thoughts, questions, or even suggestions, so please get in touch via the show notes or social channels. This episode was produced and presented by me, Radim Malinich. Editing and audio production was masterfully done by Neil McKay from 7 Million Bikes podcast and and the theme music was written and produced by Jack James. Thank you and I hope to see you on the next episode. Hey, just a quick note to say thank you for joining me on this episode. If this is your first time or you're a regular listener, please take a minute and rate the show on your chosen platform. A short review helps every show to be more visible to new listeners and provide them with value. So thank you for helping out. Thank you.