MCC #61 – 23 Jun 2023
Welcome to My Creative Calling!
It’s been a stressful week.
My son was sick again.
We had to take my son to hospital late one night with breathing difficulties.
If you’re a parent, you can relate to the struggles.
They are so little.
So vulnerable.
Oh well, thankfully, he’s ok.
And we will bounce back from this.
I’ve developed a real love/hate relationship with daycare. I drop my kid off, and it frees up creative work time. But also wipes it out, as it’s a breeding ground of sickness amongst the kids.
If you’re not a parent, I’m sure you can still relate to that painful feeling — waiting in the emergency room for 5 hours late at night. It sucks.
It throws your sleep out like jetlag.
Your work week feels ruined.
But as professionals, we must find ways to press on, even when we don’t feel like it.
So naturally, my newsletter slipped to the bottom of my priority list.
What to write about?
I’ve got a couple of big topics in the pipeline, and one I was going to do this week, but given my fractured state of mind, I knew I wouldn’t do it justice by trying to shortcut it.
So I put that on the back burner.
But then I’m left in the same position — what to write about?
The newsletter is due today!
What do you do when you have nothing to write about?
Well, here’s an easy way to get started.
You look at your daily life.
- What’s happened this week?
- What struggles have you faced and overcome?
- What insights have you learned this week?
- What are you excited about?
As you can see, I’ve already just written about some of the struggles from my week.
But I want to bring you some deeper insight.
One thing did pop out at me.
I watched a YouTube Live replay of Rich Litvin — Supercharge Your Coaching for 2023.
Rich is one of my favourite coaches. He inspires me to show up powerfully and better coach my clients.
Rich is a master at holding that sacred coaching space. He goes deep with his questions that lead you to insight.
But not only that. He has another skill that separates him from most coaches.
“What’s that?” you wonder.
He is a great storyteller.
The magic of storytelling
This is powerful, as those insights land much deeper when they come through a story instead of stated advice.
It’s great in a group coaching sense, as he is not “giving advice”. He simply asks permission to tell a story, and the group draws out their own lessons and insights relevant to their personal situation.
It’s magic to see.
And so I channel you to bring more of a storytelling mindset to your daily life.
It could be how you show up as a leader at work, with clients, in your content, with your spouse, or as a parent.
Human beings love stories. We are meaning-making machines.
So, to be more influential, start practising your storytelling skills.
“So Matt, what’s an example here?”
Well, Rich wanted to convey the following insight:
Sounds like great advice.
But it lands a bit generic when you read it like that.
It doesn’t really inspire you, does it?
And coaches aren’t in the business of “giving advice”.
No, we help our clients uncover their insights by drawing from the gold already within them.
Advice doesn’t work if it isn’t earned
Really, how often does someone take your advice?
Haha, I have noticed this with my wife. It’s become a running joke between us as we recognise the ways we fail to take each other well-intentioned “advice”.
I’ll tell her an insight I found important that will improve our lives.
And what does she do?
She totally ignores me.
And keeps doing things her way.
Why?
Well, she hasn’t yet earned that insight.
And what do you know, she’ll come back sometime later and say, “I learned ‘X’. It’s changed my life!”
And I’ll be like, “I told you that six months ago!”
She had to uncover it herself. Now it’s real for her.
And so this is why coaching is impressive.
As the process uncovers those insights that can instantly change lives, they call them breakthroughs!
So back to Rich. How did he hit me so profoundly?
He told a story.
Story > advice
And you know what else was great about this?
He demonstrated that you don’t even have to tell your own story to make an impact. He told someone else’s story.
As a newbie to your space, you may feel we don’t yet have compelling stories to tell your audience.
That was certainly me, as I stated writing online.
And if that’s you, start with other people’s stories. That’s what I do in many of my newsletters.
And here’s a little secret I discovered…
Exploring other people’s stories triggers memories of our own stories, which we can then tell.
You will see that in my past newsletters, rather than just telling other people’s stories, I relate them to my own experience — then it becomes unique. Not some generic Wikipedia or ChatGPT content — no, it becomes something different — my creative expression.
So don’t be afraid to use other people’s stories for inspiration.
A story of obstacle into an opportunity
Rich told the story of the film director Ridley Scott and the struggles he faced early in his career when making Blade Runner (1982):
But before he read the story, Rich prefaced:
It’s your job to listen and pay attention to hear why this story is meaningful to you right now.
How this story will help you create clients in a way that you’ve never done before.
How this story will help you turn goals that look impossible into a reality, in a way that wasn’t possible before you heard the story.
Rich Litvin
Then he dived into the story:
When Ridley Scott, the film director, got the financing to make Blade Runner, it wasn’t as much as he wanted. The Hollywood studio back then didn’t believe in it as much as he did, so they cut costs.
Ridley wanted to build a futuristic Los Angeles set for the movie. But all the studio would give him was an existing backlot, part of a generic 1920s Town they’d built ages ago, an unused set where they used to shoot gangster movies during Prohibition times.
But gangster movies had fallen out of fashion, and the buildings and streets on the set were decayed and peeling.
Ridley looked at it and wondered what to do.
He felt insulted.
The studio clearly didn’t take his film seriously.
What were his options?
He could tell the studio to shove it. But if he did that, it would almost certainly be the end of the movie, and probably the end of his film career in Hollywood too.
So what could he do?
How does he shoot a futuristic science fiction film about mutant robots in a set that was designed for black-and-white films about gangsters?
Ridley thought it over, and he thought a future is never going to be simply about the future. The future isn’t just about brand-new buildings and brand-new cars and brand-new everything. The future is always about the latest things overlaid on what came before.
He thought, “I could overlay the future onto this set from the past”.
Then he added shiny aluminium piping to the outside of the buildings. He added neon signs to the outside of the buildings and people in futuristic plastic clothes carrying neon umbrellas and travelling airships with massive outdoor TV screens.
And all these futuristic props were overlaid on the grungy, old buildings. They just emphasised how the future always elbows the past aside.
But it did something much more important.
Because of all the neon, Ridley decided to shoot the movie at night. The neon would show up much better in the dark.
They would also throw all the buildings into the background. To increase the effect he’d shoot in the rain, giving the movie the feel of a deserted and bypassed planet Earth. Perfect for a story about returning mutant robots looking for their history.
And the set did something even more important than that.
The cumulative effect was to give the entire movie an all-pervading dark, ominous, threatening, sinister mood. It launched an entirely new genre of filmmaking — noir science fiction.
Blade Runner became the movie that Ridley Scott says he is most proud of. Since its release, it’s won over 40 awards worldwide, being reissued in seven different versions. It is considered a masterpiece.
After Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s career took off. He went on to make massively successful movies, many of them. He’s been knighted in the UK, and in a recent Hollywood poll, he was voted one of the most important directors in the world.
Because he took a problem and turned it into an opportunity.
Rich Litvin telling the Ridley Scott story — I’m not aware if there is an original writer of this story. If you know, please tell me, and I will credit them here.
Rich then wrapped this up, bringing it back to you:
What do you get for you?
Why was I telling you that story?
What do you need from that story? For whatever you’re creating next?
Why was that story the reason you’re on this call? That if you got cut off now, you’ve got everything you needed to know already.
Rich Litvin
People draw different meanings from stories – Here are some insights from the Ridley Scott story which Rich read out from people in the audience chat:
“The future elbows the past aside.”
“The obstacle is the way.”
“Nothing’s ever perfect.”
“There’s always a way forward.”
“All the answers are within me. I just need to use a different lens.”
“Stay open to the possibility with a free and creative mind.”
“Create with what you have.”
See how the story landed a little differently for everyone, as everyone has their particular way of looking at the world. We all have unique challenges and goals on our horizon.
And so, what did I do after this story of turning problems into a way forward?
Well, I used it to solve my problem:
“How the bloody hell am I going to write a newsletter this week?”
Here it is! I did it.
I turned my problem into an opportunity here in this newsletter — I’d had a rough week, my plans when out the window, and I had nothing to write about — so I started writing about the problem. An opportunity emerged, a path forward, writing about this and turning problems into solutions.
Hopefully, this has given you some inspiration for a fresh attack on your current problems.
Reflection
What insight did you draw from the Ridley Scott story?
How can you approach your problems differently?
Is there an obstacle that could be transformed into your way forward?
Remember what Ridley did with the “insulting” film set. He managed to reframe a perceived weakness into a strength, inspiring a new generation of filmmaking. Often constraints are a good thing, as they push us to think creatively.
A quote to ponder
The impediment to action advances action.
What stands in the way becomes the way.
Marcus Aurelius
What happened this week
I posted a YouTube welcome video:
I’ve previously posted YouTube Shorts, but this is my first step towards weekly long-form video content.
If you’re keen to join me on this journey, hit subscribe!
Final thoughts
Today’s writing background music playlist was 4am Chillout on Spotify.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with a friend, and if you haven’t already, sign up here.
It would be great to have you on board!
Cheers!
Matt K. Head
When you’re ready, here’s how I can help you:
Coaching
- Find more meaning and fulfilment in your work
- Gain clarity and start taking action on your creative journey
