Creative Thinking: How Embracing Dumb Ideas Empowers Adaptive Problem-Solving

Episode 221 Creative Thinking: How Embracing Dumb Ideas Empowers Adaptive Problem-Solving

00:00 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
This is the Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Biesecker. Ignorance, when it comes to innovative ideas, is thinking dumber the key to unlocking brilliant, adaptive problem solving. What if the secret to groundbreaking innovation wasn't about thinking harder, but instead about thinking differently, even playful? Today we're diving into a refreshing perspective on creativity with author David Carson. The mind behind Dumbify, a platform that turns surprisingly nonsensical ideas into powerful catalysts for genius. By embracing unconventional thinking and breaking free from rigid mental patterns, david shows us how to shatter the Ordinary, inhibit this vital skill. Tune in to find out how. When we return to the Light Inside. 

01:10
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02:21
Whether you're leading a team, a brand or just looking for a way to break out of a mental rut, dumbify offers a fresh framework for creative problem solving. So get ready to challenge the way you think, because sometimes the best ideas start by daring to be just a little bit dumber. Author David Carson is inspiring us to find genius where others see nonsense as a furtive ground for creative growth. His platform, dumbify, offers a fresh batch of dumb ideas and stories with a purpose To inspire, teach and help you think in ways that shatter the ordinary and unlock extraordinary ideas of your own. That shatter the ordinary and unlock extraordinary ideas of your own. Today we examine the core psychological patterns, both primary and secondary, that influence our emotional reactions and shape our sense of identity. We'll explore how unresolved psychological data can create barriers to adaptive, creative thinking, and how embracing this process can lead us to greater flexibility and innovation. David, I'm thrilled to share this discussion. Thanks for joining us. 

03:29 - David Carson (Guest)
Yeah, me too. I'm excited to have this conversation, Jeffrey. 

03:32 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
David, when we think of finding solutions in life, we often think from the mind frame of thinking smarter. Yet you've named your platform, Dumbify. Could you share with us a little bit about what your program's mission is? 

03:45 - David Carson (Guest)
The core mission is really to get people to understand that you could actually get smarter by thinking dumber and to sort of understand, like what that means, right? 

03:54 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
Awesome. That's the core mission. 

03:55 - David Carson (Guest)
I always like the conversations that you have, that sort of you know wrap itself into mindfulness and the psychology of why we do the things that we do. I think what Dumbify is is really just kind of a conversation around a misperception of what being smart is, and I think there's sort of this territory of thinking that we never allow ourselves to go into because it's just been beat out of us over time by our parents or by teachers, and it's this territory that I call dumb thinking, which is really this place where we've all had that thing that happens to us, where we have a problem and we'll have this dumb idea that will pop into our head and we might think that it's ridiculous. We might think that it's, you know, very odd or weird. However, that idea might be part of the way to solve that problem, but we'll just quickly dismiss it. We train ourselves over time not to even think about these dumb ideas or to give agency to any of those ideas, and yet history has taught us that most of the breakthroughs that we experience in life, whether it be culture or whether that be something in science, has really come out of what I would call dumb thinking. 

05:03
It's those people that are open in their own minds, right to entertain those dumb ideas that come through, because there's something very interesting about your brain and how it processes information. But if we're sort of always putting on this front, where we constantly have to be right or we have to feel like people perceive us to be smart, we will sort of miss those opportunities essentially. So Dumbify is really about giving you confidence to understand that, hey, thinking dumber is something that you can try and you can actually apply that to real problems that you might have either in your life or something around work that you're trying to achieve. And just know that historically you're in really good company. There have been plenty of really dumb thinkers or people that have been perceived as being dumb, that have actually contributed greatly right to society. So it's really about giving you that confidence to understand how to think this way it's okay to think this way and then how to apply it essentially right to anything in your life. 

05:57 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
David, in our earlier conversations you and I talked about how we all kind of hold on to that notion of having anxiety or fear of looking dumb or appearing dumb to others and how that sometimes shuts us down or drives us toward that idea of control and how we control our image, how we control what we present to others, how we control those rigid beliefs and thought patterns a lot of times. So in that regard, what role do you think that inherent need of control plays in how we open up to creative thinking? 

06:31 - David Carson (Guest)
I think we all have these issues in spades, where we just have this bias towards how we see ourselves and how we want other people to see us, right, and so we're constantly sort of putting on this controlled face or these controlled kind of answers, and it's almost as if you start putting your brain immediately into self-edit mode instead of explore mode, and so you essentially trying to be yourself in these situations is incredibly hard, because your parents wanted you to be smart, your teachers wanted you to be smart, and so what you've learned essentially is how to play that person right. It's kind of like I might be a doctor on TV but I'm not a doctor in real life. Right, it's like I play a smart person on TV but not one in real life. There's sort of like this acting job right that we sometimes do. It's very performative and I think there's so much room, I think, for people to stop judging themselves and self-editing right. So much. I think is kind of key. So, like we had talked about mindfulness as being, like such an interesting way to think about how to essentially let some of these ideas come through and your control system is going to want to throw those things away or it's going to want to react to them in ways that probably aren't super healthy, and so you know, mindfulness at least gets you to that space where you're not going to judge those things that are coming through, so you don't have to be as performative in how you react to them. 

07:52
What Dumbify is really saying, as it would relate to mindfulness, is those things that sort of come forward, that are those odd weird ideas. You know. Even in that moment you kind of might just like let them go. In that state, I think what I'm asking is like just listen to that a little bit longer, maybe hold those ideas for a little bit longer. When you do it helps that that idea of control that you do have. It's going to help kind of loosen that up right a little bit, like the idea that your brain has this ability to change itself over time, right, the neuroplasticity of your brain and how you feed it and how you choose to react to things is so it's such a fascinating thing to think about that. 

08:32
If you kind of want that control mechanism to sort of dissolve, I think thinking about how mindfulness plays and holding on to those really dumb ideas kind of helps you to have a different type of control where you're willing to accept the dumb ideas that might be floating in your head because we've all got them. 

08:49
Like, let's be honest, I find it funny that we all have the capability of being dumb right as much as we actually have the capability of being smart right, and yet we will bias towards wanting to be one rather than the other because the other one makes us feel like there's tons of fear right Embedded in that, and so how can you get sort of that control mechanism to understand that on that other side, like that's a place that you can go to. 

09:14
You can actually perform that incredibly well if you kind of lean into it, and I find mindfulness being sort of like a path, like a way to start right, Just a way to sort of listen to those ideas and just marinate in those dumb ideas that come out just a little bit longer, and you'll start to see your brain start to shift a little bit. But that it's okay that I actually A have these thoughts and, b there actually might be agency that I could put behind those things and I should be able to now verbalize these right In front of myself, in front of others, and I can probably grow from that experience. But then I've also got a whole new set of essentially solutions right that I've never had before, because I wasn't even going to entertain any of these ideas, because I only wanted to look smart right in the room. 

09:55 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
You and I talked in our conversation earlier about how understanding our internal control mechanisms shapes our awareness and we need to differentiate between rigid control and adaptive control, or finite control and access control. Whereas that finite control is that internal drive to consciously control, manipulate, like you said, masking, versus those more unconscious adaptive models of access control where we go into that default neural programming or that default network access through neuroplasticity. How do you define or separate those differences between finite control and access control and what role does that play in our metacognitive functioning or freeing up that creative access? 

10:44 - David Carson (Guest)
That's an interesting question. 

10:45
I think the way I probably interpret that, if I follow you, is there's sort of like a very flexible mode of thinking and there's a very inflexible mode of thinking, and the inflexible part is really around the biases right that we've accumulated over time, and so that becomes much more of the default mode of how you've sort of programmed yourself over time to respond. 

11:05
And then there's the flexible side, which is right, those things that are very surprising, the things that come up that almost feel unconscious in a way, and those are the things that you might not lean into as much because they feel untested, they feel like they're territory you're not used to. And so I think that the flexible mode is, to me, is far more interesting because it's a place to grow. Once you sort of set up your expert bias, you're just so much more likely to miss things that somebody who doesn't know anything about your field might actually come up with or ask, right. And so it's how do you sort of keep that beginner's mind so that you have the flexibility to ask yourself questions that your expert or biased side would never dream? 

11:50 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
right of asking, the role of the psyche and ego processes come into play. To me, that highlights the importance of recognizing secondary reflective patterns and how that unlocks adaptability and creativity. David, how do you feel secondary patterns, like reflective processing and unitive ego development, help us recognize those ego filters that shape our thinking? 

12:06 - David Carson (Guest)
Yeah, we've probably all experienced that Like think about, you know, those times where you've walked into a room and you've immediately started to put on almost a performance, right, of how you think others are looking to you to react right, essentially, and you immediately go towards this bias of, oh, I must appear in this way. In this case, I must sound smart, right, essentially, and you immediately go towards this bias of, oh, I must appear in this way. In this case, I must sound smart, right, I must be clever. 

12:30
What's so intriguing, I think, is when you meet people who don't do that, who are willing to almost like it's almost like they've just opened the aperture to the whole room and everything feels kind of possible, it doesn't feel shut down, it doesn't feel like it's somehow in a box, and you might look at that person and go, man, I could never be that, I could never do that, I could never just walk into a room, say what I think, what I actually think right, ask the questions that I actually have. 

12:56
But watch that person, because their ability to truly understand what's happening in that room and to actually plug into and try and really solve those problems if there is one in the room obviously they're just going to have so much more useful stuff right from just acting in that way. So, like, what really prevents us from being in that room? And I think it's. You know, it's pretty obvious stuff, it's. We're all very afraid, right, to look stupid in front of people, right, and trying to get over that fear is one thing. So how do you do that? You know, how can you feel confident walking into that room that what's going on inside of your head and the dumb things that you might've swatted away, how can you become more comfortable in expressing that and channeling that in a way that's really productive and useful From a clinical perspective. 

13:43 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
we look at that identity aspect and how, when we meet that emotional discomfort, we tend to split those parts off. You know an action called splitting, where we'll take that part of our identity. Well, this is the part of me that feels rejected, this is the part of me that doesn't feel valued, this is the part of me that feels dumb and we repress that. You know, we compartmentalize that and kind of stuff it in its own little box or space over here that we avoid interacting. So in that regard. 

14:12
We typically tie that to from my perspective an internal family system. We look at all of those identities as a part of our larger identity Totally. 

14:22 - David Carson (Guest)
And it's funny that once you've sort of established that identity, anything that kind of counters that in any way right becomes incredibly uncomfortable to think about. 

14:32
And yet I wonder sometimes like the analogy for me would be. There are certain things that make me uncomfortable in life, like if I'm an athlete, for example, right, there's going to be a whole host of things that physically I'm just not able to do yet. And so that's the thing that has me sort of hung up on the idea of identity, because in that instance of the athlete, I could have presupposed that I come into that situation that I won't be able to do any of these things. Right, I might not have the stamina that's needed, right For this. I might not have the accuracy that's needed, that's needed. Right, for this I might not have the accuracy that's needed. 

15:06
And yet if I have somebody that's actually telling me well, yes, you can, you can't now, but you can if you work at this it's almost like that discomfort's, almost like it's information. It's telling you what to try and improve, not what to throw away, not to discard. There's sort of like a, there's a laziness, I think, to all of us, where you know you instantly want to go towards that area that feels the most comfortable, which is great, don't get me wrong. 

15:27 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
Yeah, that's default programming and that can serve us either in a beneficial manner or an adverse manner. It's that same quick default programming that does allow us to lean into intuition. When we integrate those blocks, we can lean into that genuine intuitive thinking and say, yes, I feel inspired to move toward that. 

15:48 - David Carson (Guest)
Yeah, and it's almost. The more you actually dive into that discomfort, the more that's going to be incorporated into your identity, because you will have been able to sort of go to that next level, like you would have been able to show yourself that, oh, I can accomplish that, I can do this. So, therefore, this is now a new part of my identity and I think the challenge for a lot of people me included, because I have these problems in spade you're really looking for putting your best self forward right essentially, but not really taking into account that your best foot forward is also this kind of weird odd side that you do have, and by not sort of offering that in some capacity, you're sort of missing a lot of things that you either could be doing or could be solving. So similar to that sort of athlete, how can I train myself to be okay with all of that and how can I actually channel it so I can be useful and productive with that kind of thinking? All of that, and how can I actually channel it so I can be useful and productive with that kind of thinking? 

16:46
I really do feel like when I say getting smarter by thinking dumber is not about lowering your IQ. That's not what that means. It simply means that there's this whole other way that you think that you've been trained to not use and that you've been trained to not value, and if you sort of re-approach that, you can actually become really great at discovering how that could be very useful for you and that becomes sort of a part of your identity, that sort of grows. It's a way for you to not be so static, Like we're all looking for ways to improve ourselves and there's a whole territory of thinking that you've just been told is not useful, and I think that's wrong. I feel like there's a whole new territory. It's like it's ready to be mined. It's already in your head, right? So how can you shape it and how can you use that to make whatever you're trying to do better? 

17:37 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
You and I touched on that in our last conversation about how, throughout my upbringing, I was taught this beginner's mindset by looking at this mantra of I don't know is not the answer. So often we find ourselves in that space of not knowing and feel that fear and freeze up, or feel that fear and try to deflect it or stuff it down. We were taught through that model that so often we're guided to have that answer. From that model I learned to reframe it. You know I was very fortunate in that aspect. That I don't know is the question part. It's in that questioning that we truly discover. What can we learn here with curiosity? 

18:22 - David Carson (Guest)
Yeah, I love that. That was a fun conversation. What a gift that your parents were able to give you the space right to understand that. I think that's wonderful when you're taught at an early age that it's okay to question and that, I don't know, is kind of an answer in and of itself. But when you're doing that, you're really just trying to understand. Like you'll just never gain understanding if you don't ask that big dumb question Like Like you'll just never gain understanding if you don't ask that big dumb question. Like think of that four-year-old that just constantly asks you why, right, why is the sky blue? You'll do an answer. Well, why this right? 

18:52
It just keeps going and that's, you know, to have parents that understand like, oh, that's part of the learning process and so very different from a parent or a teacher who is really looking for you to have the right answer and when you don't have it, is somehow going to punish you for not having the right answer. And in that aspect we're very much rewarded for having the right answer. As if, like, the learning aspect isn't the thing that you're really trying to learn, like it's not about necessarily learning the fact or the figure or the right answer, it's what's the process that you use in order to figure out? How do you solve problems right? And part of that is in not knowing. We all start in not knowing. So why have we sort of put this emphasis on the wrong part of the reward system? 

19:35
So I would always question. I love kids who just question all the time. It just shows that they truly want to get understanding, they really want to understand the world around them. But then you would see, you know other kids as they start to get older. They feel foolish because the teacher is like God. Why are they being so disruptive in class? You know, why are they asking all these questions? I've got 30 kids here in my class that I need to teach and it just becomes a very different environment. I was curious, by the way, did you grow up also in a Montessori school experience? 

20:04 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
at all. No, not per se. I kind of had an abjunct, self-inflicted Montessori environment. I tend to be a very quick learner. We kind of discussed that a little bit where, you know, my comprehension model was very quick, and so what I would tend to do then is very realistically create my own Montessori environment. I get bored, you know, and so rather than tune out, rather than get in trouble which I kind of got in trouble sometimes for not paying attention I dove further into the book. I'd start reading ahead, I'd start doing homework ahead, and I had that curious natural inclination, largely conditioned into me there's a positive instance of conditioning and how we can leverage that and was self-motivated. But to keep from that boredom I had two choices Either I doodled and got in trouble or I looked like I was engaging but I'd subtly flip the pages and read ahead and study ahead. So I still have that pattern in habit. I'm always looking forward, I'm always kind of reaching well, what is the next conclusion? I know that's atypical of most people's experience. 

21:11 - David Carson (Guest)
Yeah, I think very atypical. I find it fascinating that naturally that's kind of where your head went as a kid. I remember I had some Montessori in school. We had it from first to third grade. It was sort of an experiment that they were trying in our school system and it's such a radically different approach. 

21:27
I actually loved it and it was really teaching you how to be more self-motivated just through the curriculum and you're really diving into subjects at your own pace and you're asking questions as you have them and that learning process I thought was really great. And then in fourth grade it all stops and it becomes here's the curriculum, right? Here's the book that we're reading. Here's the test you're going to take every Friday and if somebody has a question, raise your hand, but don't ask too many questions because I need to move on right Now. All of a sudden, my biases and the things that I'm learning is to shut off that part of myself that really helped me to learn in that Montessori way and I'm not a Montessori expert by any means. I just I find that kids or people that have actually gone through programs like that have a very different view of how they understand information and how they apply it. 

22:18 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
It does tend to be a more curiosity-driven model and I know again situationally that's fairly atypical for most children in their learning environment. So often the framing is why don't you know, with that kind of harsh undertone of judgment, of harsh judgment, we have to exercise there again what is kind, compassionate, empathetic judgment, even in our own actions, even when we're interacting with others. And where does that become harsh? You know so often culturally that why don't you know, is the biggest factor that creates that traumatic impact. 

22:54 - David Carson (Guest)
Yeah, it puts everyone kind of on their heels and I mean, let's face it, nobody really feels great when somebody says that that's not going to give you any more agency, other than even more anxiety for most. But I think that the curiosity factor is one like how do you get people who have lost their ability to even be curious, you know what is? What's the catalyst that's going to get their brain to just sort of like shift and say, like that's what I'm curious. When I ask these questions, I feel good about where that takes me, and then even more so, like can you be around an environment of whether it's friends, whether it's family, whether it's people at work? How is that being set up so that you can actually be even way more productive than having this bizarre environment that's constantly looking for the right answer and you're fired if you don't have it? How can you create an environment that has curiosity and collaboration right, sort of instilled, and it's not as if you can't be productive with that? This is not some sort of airy-fairy. Let's just think about anything we want and not apply any of it. It's that if you're in this mode of thinking, you're kind of missing half of this world of solution sets right, and so as a leader, I would certainly want my team to be curious right all the time. I would want them to be asking a million right questions and then I would want them to try and apply all of the ideas that they're coming up with from this set of curiosity and I'd want them to stand those things up very quickly. I'd want to see you know at least some sort of minimal, viable version right of that solution set and that they could work to create that. 

24:26
And I think you see this a lot in really great companies. I think you've seen that in sort of the tech world over the last 20 years. Give or take what we think culturally about where those companies are at today. I think what those companies sort of instilled was this idea that it's OK to fail. Just make sure that you're failing very quickly, because failure essentially is new information. It tells you what didn't work and it also tells you, hey, there were some aspects in there that actually could work. So let me modify, let me revise and let me try and stand this up in a new and different way. 

24:57
I think we see these types of approaches also being valid in the sense of even the investment community also being valid in the sense of even the investment community. 

25:05
Like, when I think about tech being sort of like that first version of trying to create environments like that, to create new products, you had investors who actually thought about this and said, hey, why is it that if I put money into a company that sounded like oh my God, what a great smart idea, but then I also put money into a thing where, like, I'm not quite sure that that might be the dumbest thing I've ever heard or it might be brilliant. I'm just not sure, right, if you ask them, they will tell you that they're never quite sure and in fact, it's a parody as to which one of those ideas will actually be successful. And I just find that fascinating that people who are actually putting their real money behind projects like that's essentially a part of the pattern recognition right that they've received, and so I feel like there's just so many more aspects to life other than VC investing in tech products obviously right where that type of thinking and that type of pattern recognition can be applied. 

26:00 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
You're touching on something here that's paramount to me environment. We learn a lot of that pattern based on environment, what we're mirrored growing up especially, we start forming all of these identity associations before the age of seven, when we don't have full capacity for logic and reasoning. We're merely marrying emotional patterns. Context and situational basis come into play there. What's the context, like you said, in that environment? Is it an open, creative, stimulating environment? Or is it that harsh, judgmental environment? Harsh judgment versus kind, empathetic judgment? 

26:39 - David Carson (Guest)
Yeah, and sometimes there's kind of a combination, right, of those two. Yes, you know, I think culturally we're all like, as an icon of this kind of thinking love or hate somebody like Steve Jobs is an example, right Like we all know the stories of where he seems like a horrible person and other areas where he seems like a creative genius, all very mythological, right kind of concepts. But at the end of the day, you know, I think he really created an environment that was very unique to the way that he thinks, but what he was interested in was he wanted to hire the best possible people, like people who were smarter than he was, but there was also a diversity of the people that were on that team, and that creates a really interesting, unique environment. But judgment comes into play. It's not as if, you know, nothing can be judged At the end of the day it's essentially everybody has a point of view, it's essential we make judgments. 

27:31 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
We have to judge what the weather is. We have to judge if we're feeding ourselves. We have to judge if we're interacting in a kind manner. You know it's essential in our well-being. How are we leveraging those judgments? You know what is the context behind that judgment comes into play. 

27:49 - David Carson (Guest)
I think that's essentially like our own agency at play, right? So, like, what is our point of view and how are we going to apply that? That said, I think there are when people think about judgment in environments like a workplace. There are ways to shut things down, and there are when people think about judgment in environments like a workplace. There are ways to shut things down and there are ways to open things up and there are ways to get things to grow. So, as an example, I think about comedy, primarily because there's a technique that improv has just always used. 

28:15
We're all kind of aware of it, right, that yes, and methodology, and that's simply that when you're on stage and you're doing an improv and there's a ridiculous situation that's put in front of you as an improv actor on that stage, when something weird is offered, you don't turn it down and say no, you don't, right, try and like stuff that down. You really take that ridiculous premise and you're really going to say yes, right, and you're going to add to it. That's a really interesting way to think about how you can work in environments and in teams. You're still placing your judgment, you're still placing your values, you're still placing your point of view in that situation right, Without necessarily shutting something down, because in that environment where you're trying to create something that's not needed yet, that comes later, and so, like in that collaboration, do you trust everybody that's there to have the respect to take those ideas and to add to them right and to help shape those things? 

29:11
And so, when you're aware of that, you have just a wonderful environment with which to create things Doesn't mean it's always going to be roses. There are points where people are obviously going to have conflicts. But I think how you actually treat others around you in that environment and the trust that you would have around their capacity to really understand what it is that you're saying. I mean how wonderful to have a work environment like that. I think we would all aspire to be the people in that room and to want to work there. 

29:36 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
We had a great conversation on that several seasons back with a British comedian by the name of Alfie Knowles, where we talked about how comedy and playfulness can inspire creativity. Yet we still have to be mindful again of those contexts. We have to be mindful of when we might be using that humorous or donning humor that becomes a deflective or defensive coping mechanism. You know, sometimes there's that sarcastic, flippant remark we make that's actually a form of passive aggression. 

30:08 - David Carson (Guest)
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that can happen. It's funny. You just reminded me of us literally having a conversation with a friend of mine last week and she was making this remark that they were doing something for American Express as one of her clients. And there was this they were trying to figure out this program which was, you know, giving essentially like refunds on certain things. 

30:30
American Express is wonderful, that if something happens right, you purchase something, it gets stolen, like there are all sorts of benefits and ways to get refunded right essentially for that. And somebody was just being sarcastic right in the room refunded right essentially for that. And somebody was just being sarcastic right in the room and they had just had one of their favorite players from a professional team get traded to another team but they had just bought that jersey right of that player and and so they just sort of said out loud, you know, sarcastically, it's like, yeah, you know, we should really refund when that happens right, like when your favorite player gets traded, I now have have to call Amex and get that refund. And everybody laughed Like it was kind of a bad, funny, sarcastic joke. But that actually became something that they're like wait, that's a really funny idea. 

31:11
And we should probably see now, yeah, so that's literally something that they picked up. And again it kind of goes to like, even if you've got something on your mind and it's something that just makes you angry, but the way that that comes out right and sort of that very playful way, right, people were able to kind of grasp onto it. So it wasn't about being self-deflective, it wasn't about being passive, aggressive. It's like, man, I really hate it when this happens, like wouldn't it be great if right, and everybody's like, oh my God, that's hilarious, like we should do that, like that's a cool environment. That's where this type of thinking really, really applies. 

31:48 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
Yeah, I think it's kind of essential that we develop some self-awareness where we are somewhat cognizant of when we are leveraging those things. I think we have that instinct where you know, ok, this is biting. This is kind of me jabbing at somebody there. Again, going back to that conversation with Alfie and our look at comedy so often comedy is that direct jab. How do we find that? Middle ground to me becomes essential. 

32:14 - David Carson (Guest)
How do you feel we find that middle ground it's funny, like middle ground is such an interesting territory. That was a loaded question. It is funny because I'm going like on one side I really love the idea that, even like humor is just such a great way to get things to stick in your brain. Right, like you learn things faster when it's humorous, for some reason. Right, all sorts of research points to the fact that just becomes far stickier in your brain from memory. Humor. 

32:39 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
Humor tends to really work well, neurochemically, what's going on there? You know we're releasing those feel-good chemicals, so there, again is where that fine line, sometimes that feel-good chemical, is the one also that we have to be mindful of balancing that we're not feeling good about those sour grapes that we harbor. You know, that's it. It's a fine line there again where that judgment comes Totally. 

33:01 - David Carson (Guest)
And judgment's interesting in that context because for some people, having that joke right, that just came out, or creating something that's just very funny in the room, most people would sort of say, that's funny, let's move on, right, yeah, but think of all the really interesting things that have been created in culture and things that we would consume that have started from like these really bad jokes essentially. And so like the judgment comes into play, I think, in one place where there's humor, but now like there's something in that that I'm willing to investigate and now I'm actually going to put agency behind it, I'm going to try and make that real, like as a silly example. This will sound very silly probably to your audience, but there's a water brand now called Liquid Death and you know that essentially kind of started as a joke and you know the idea that you would reframe water as liquid death is funny, considering that. You know, on the other side it's, you know, mountain springs and right, everything feels very blue, very green, and these guys come in with almost like an energy drink, but for Norwegian death metal it's just, it's a very strange way to go about it, but but there was something about that idea where they were like you know what I'm going to give this agency, I'm going to actually try and put this thing right out into into the world. 

34:21
And so, like you know, going back to your thing about, like, middle ground and judgment, in that I think there's something really interesting about how everybody sort of applies their own point of view as to what that judgment is right and then what essentially might be that middle ground. And for them, you know, the middle ground was essentially probably very far off from what most people would consider to be middle ground, because they ended up applying it. And so I think about that. It's like why, like what makes that group of people decide that that's the action that they're going to take versus another set that might have the exact same condition, sets Like I want to start a water brand, right, as an example. 

34:57
Why don't they go there, like what? What prevents them, right, essentially, from that stupid thought to thing, right Essentially, and put it out there in the world? And those are the types of things that I like to sort of study, those are the things that I'm interested in researching and I just I find those, those, the people that are so natural and so adept at being able to do that I find kind of fascinating, almost kind of freeing right In a way. So I'm always attracted to those types of stories where that type of thinking works. 

35:24 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
This is something that's come up for me throughout our conversations, that idea of middle ground in mediocrity. Going back in my research and I've battled with clients with this where they're stuck on that idea of mediocrity. A large portion of that is emotionally driven by default programming. But that idea of mediocrity, what is the core meaning of mediocrity? You know, a large portion of that is emotionally driven by default programming. But that idea of mediocrity, what is the core meaning of mediocrity, has been kind of contorted from its original meaning, which simply met in the middle of something. 

35:52
Yeah, Finding that middle ground. 

35:55 - David Carson (Guest)
I had a very funny TikTok video of all things that hit me and this guy was asking this question. He said if large is the opposite of small, then what is the opposite of medium? 

36:12 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
That's a good one to sit with. I even have to ponder that, because it takes you back. 

36:17 - David Carson (Guest)
It does. 

36:17 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
You're also, like everybody's, going to have a different You're instantly out of the black and white, because now there's a third equation here to consider and we don't ever consider that third equation. 

36:27 - David Carson (Guest)
No, and also, like everybody's going to have a different point of view of how to answer that question For me, I looked at medium and I thought, okay, how would I constitute what medium is? And I came to, well, maybe it's a compromise. Maybe, because it's not large, not small, it's a compromise. So maybe the opposite of medium is uncompromising, maybe that's it right. And I thought, okay, maybe that's got something interesting there. But then it also got me thinking about how we think about things that are in the middle. Right, and this kind of goes to your mediocre kind of mindset thinking was that we actually might really undervalue or maybe we actually misrepresent, like what that thing in the middle is, like it's one, one thing to say that, right, but we can. 

37:12
We can maybe look at it differently. Do you remember in school, like eighth grade, you'd have like the? You'd learn about the venn diagram, right, yes, and so you'd put those two circles together and that overlap, right, that little section was like what they had in common, right, if you will? Right, yeah, exactly. 

37:27 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
However, where do they meet in the middle? 

37:30 - David Carson (Guest)
Right and so like, but that meet in the middle feels like again, like oh, that's the compromise, Like these are the things where they, that's the commonality, right, and it's like great. 

37:38 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
It's kind of a loaded gun, though we've been conditioned to believe that. Right, but it's so. So then how often do we hit the seal over the head with that and say, hey, there's something underperforming in this. We condition that. You know, we load all of our identity behind that. 

37:51 - David Carson (Guest)
Most of our performance anxiety is waged behind that basic concept that somehow we're underperforming and if you looked at what, what that middle moment is like, you're assuming that when you put those two circles together in the Venn diagram, you're assuming that there actually is overlap. What if there is no overlap? What if they're completely polar opposites essentially? And so what I found kind of interesting about that idea was well, if you were to take, like, those two circles and put them together almost like a hydrogen collider and just mash them together, that thing that's in the middle right, that thing that we would have seen, oh, that's the very beige right, sort of mediocre thing. That's the overlap. In that instance it's actually creating something quite new. Like the idea of taking two polar opposites and putting them together, right, can't create something new. So, as an example, we were doing the exercise of what if I took cooperation and competition as like the two polar opposites, and what if I smash those two things together? And what came out of that middle was this idea of coopetition. It's like, oh, that's interesting. What is that? That's not mediocre, that's not necessarily commonality, however, it is like a way to sort of fuse like those things together and create something, something new out of it. And coopetition. The way I would interpret that would be like. 

39:08
I think there are two ways that I thought about it. One was we've seen in culture where we've had two products that might sort of come together and do a collaboration that just have no meat, like they're just so polar opposite from each other that that when they come together it just feels unique and interesting. So I think about like balenciaga right, very high-end fashion brand, right has shoes. And I think about something like crocs very low-end, right, but but also sell those shoes. I'm not knocking crocs, love those things, but like sell a crap load of them, yeah somebody 

39:39
had a brilliant idea when you put those two things together, you essentially get this collaboration that was this Balenciaga right, crocs, you know shoe that they created together, this sort of like Frankenstein shoe that everybody started talking about. I thought that that was kind of an interesting way to think about. The middle doesn't have to be mediocrity. The middle actually can be something completely new. So if you wanted to sort of maybe reframe what it means to be mediocre, I think you could look at what are the extremities with which I'm being judged by. 

40:14
What's the thing that I'm supposed to be in the middle of, and my identity might be shaped by that, but that actually might be something interesting to think about. Identity might be shaped by that, but that actually might be something interesting to think about. And there might be something that becomes much more curious around that kind of idea. Rather than accepting that oh, I'm just beige, I'm just mediocre, it sort of takes the judgment right off of that. Somewhere in that middle there is still like some interesting uniqueness and that's where your point of view can come from. 

40:35
But, like I said, it's a very weird take on that type of question. But I just I like the fact that you know you can I think you're allowed to sort of take things that feel like they don't quite fit in your mind and reapply them in ways that feel like they do make sense, and then try and apply those right to something that you're doing in your life. So I just love that story. It cracked me up when that kid asked what's the opposite of medium. It was just such a weird question to ask. 

41:03 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
You know, in this regard, we're looking a lot at dichotomy or binary systems and biases. Can we leverage those differences sometimes becomes a powerful outcome to me being in a room and if everybody does have the same tone or the same perspective of context, sometimes it's good to find those binaries. You know, where do you have a biases in this? Where can we be curious about where that pulls us? 

41:31 - David Carson (Guest)
Absolutely. I think I'm always scared when I'm in a room and everybody agrees with me. 

41:36 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
I instantly group think sucks a lot of times. 

41:38 - David Carson (Guest)
Yeah, you know it's wrong, right, just just by very nature of that action, like, oh no, this is wrong, right. You know it's wrong, right, just by very nature of that action you're like, oh no, this is wrong, right. But like it's having divergent thinking or thinkers right, divergent thinkers in your group is so critical, right, like that, you, it's like an engine, like there has to be some sort of polarity for that conversation to take some shape. Otherwise it's just kind of this blob that everybody kind of agrees with. That doesn't mean that you're disrespectful to each other, right. If you have those Healthy conflict, yeah, exactly, like that's table stakes, like that has to come with that territory. So it's like you know, again, when you're offering judgment, you're doing it in a way that's really constructive and you're doing it in a way that moves things forward. It doesn't shut them down necessarily. 

42:30
And so many people hate divergent thinkers in their group because they just want to be comfortable. And so those moments when somebody comes in and says something, it just makes the group uncomfortable. And I don't mean this in like a pejorative way, but a way it's like, oh my God, that idea sounds like either too silly or it sounds like why did he even ask that question. It just makes people uncomfortable. That's probably the thing that you should now stop what you're doing and investigate why that made everybody comfortable, because there's probably something there. 

42:52 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
It gets that fine line between disruptive and derogative. You know where are we in that line and we have to find that middle ground again. 

43:00 - David Carson (Guest)
Yeah, what is that? Let's investigate that. Why did that just make everybody uncomfortable and get curious about what was just said? And then let's try and figure out if there's something to that, if that actually helps us solve the problem that we're trying to solve, rather than just sort of passing that off and everybody feels comfortable about leaving that room without feeling uncomfortable. I think that divergent thinker in that room is essentially offering a unique way to look at your problem differently and offers the chance not always, but offers the chance of making what you're doing better. 

43:35 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
You and I have talked to some depth about Daniel Kahneman and intuitive system, one thinking and analytical system to think, thinking fast and slow. How do you feel that factors in? Do we lean into the kind of fast thinking, sometimes based on emotion, or do we sometimes engage mindfulness and slow things down? 

43:54 - David Carson (Guest)
a little bit slowing down to get there faster. 

43:57 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
Maybe even that's counterintuitive. Slowing down to get there faster is very counter. That's counterintuitive. Slowing down to get there faster is very counterintuitive for most of us Because we are so emotionally driven in that moment. Often that drive is propelling us forward. I got to come up with an answer to kind of placate this situation. 

44:15 - David Carson (Guest)
Well, I think we've all been in that space where you've rushed to judgment and you've done the wrong thing, or if you just would have taken the time to figure it out. It's kind of like what I think of. My dad would say you know, measure twice, cut once, right, kind of thing, and that I think it's just a great way to think about that. But then I also think about like both of those modes of thinking are pretty critical to have right. It's not like one is necessarily better than the other, it's how do you use them in combination? The way I think about that kind of thinking is, if I have an emotional response to something, it's essentially like waving its hands, right, and it's saying, hey, there's something here. And then on the slower side of the brain it's like great, like I want to investigate that more. 

45:03
That's not something that feels insignificant in any way. It actually feels significant because I feel so emotional about it. Why is that? And then I kind of want to unpack that Sometimes it's just that like oh, that was emotional, that was a terrible response, right, and so you move on. Others are like oh, that is interesting, like that actually triggered something that you know made me uncomfortable, and so if I, if I dig in deeper right a little, a little bit here, why is that? And I actually might find that emotional response was was incredibly valid, and not not for, like you know, the emotional mental state, but like there's something that actually, that I did not know and my emotions were telling me I didn't know it and so I really need to understand this better, and it now becomes something that I'm going to apply in some way, so like that emotional response was telling me to investigate this further rather than to let it go. 

45:52 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
So, if I might, let's tie this to internal family systems in integrative therapy. If you allow me some space here to run with this and unravel it for a second, oh, of course. 

46:01 - David Carson (Guest)
I mean, you're the expert on that integrative therapy. If you allow me some space here to run with this and unravel it for a second, oh, of course. 

46:09 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
I mean, you're the expert on that. I appreciate that humbly. So this is a real simple way to look at it. 

46:11
In that internal family systems we break that down into three basic core identities we all have. We all have that manager sense, that part of us that wants to be analytical and organized and kind of put things in its place. We all have those internal exiles or those parts of our identity that we want to mask, we want to repress, we want to run away from, avoid, shove to the side exile. And then there's that part we call the firefighter. That's there to clean up the mess, put out the fires, you know. It's there to kind of tidy things back up and organize them again. It's there to kind of control the emergencies. And so we tend to vacillate through these parts of our identities. Those exiles are the parts that you're so stupid. You know why didn't you think of this? That becomes that harsh judgment. To illustrate that Run with that, how do you see those parts coming into play when we're managing our thinking processes and stepping through those various roles? 

47:11 - David Carson (Guest)
to think right and to come up with things that feel like resolution. The way I think about that is it's that's a system and, like any system, sometimes there's a weighted bias on one or the other. 

47:29 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
Yes, Right and so like sure, Right With the jackal, mostly unconscious, especially the defensive part. 

47:39 - David Carson (Guest)
So so I wonder if there's maybe like even a fourth thing that you put on top of that, which is that right, the thing that's unconscious, that's telling you right? I know that this is the way that I think right, and and these three factors are called blending in our vernacular we call blending where you allow those parts to kind of show up. 

47:56 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
What do I need in this circumstance? What does the context call for? And I'm going to frame that with a pause. We talked earlier about context and situational basis. You know, what does the situation call for. 

48:08 - David Carson (Guest)
Yeah, and in your mind you're trying to figure out which thing to apply depending on that context, and I think for a lot of us we might misunderstand which one to apply right In a certain context. Yeah, everybody has a different point of view about what the context right actually is. Part of that, I think, is also the context is funny, because you have to sort of step out of that situation and really understand the context that you're in. 

48:34
That context is also, through your point of view, right. It's going through your mind, and so you have to figure out which one of those. 

48:41 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
You were very intuitively tuning into this today. I'm going to reiterate that. I think I'm always interested. 

48:45 - David Carson (Guest)
I'm going to reiterate that I wonder, like, how do you like for someone who, let's say, there's someone who understands that that's kind of what's happening in their mind? Yeah, they would like to step out right and look at the context of the situation to apply. However, they're going to bias those three different actions right and attune that to solve or get resolution in that moment. But what if they're really bad right At actually analyzing the context? So, like I think you and I were having this conversation where I have there's this archetype of a person that I'm just so jealous of as a person, and it's that very self-unaware person that I just, I've just always loved, because I think we've all had this person that maybe we've worked with or is in our family. 

49:33
I've had this person where we've walked into a room, we're pitching an idea, and they bomb so hard, they say all of the wrong things in all the right ways. It's just, it is just a calamity. And when we walk out of that room, that person goes yes, nailed it. And so in that instance, it was just a total misinterpretation of what the context was in that room. So for somebody that is sort of unaware of that context, how would you try and get them to. First of all, is that a problem? And then, second of all, if it is, you know, how would you get them to understand the context, maybe a little bit better? 

50:14 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
It sounds kind of glib, but it's typically only a problem. If we make it a problem, that is very glib. When I reflect on it, it oversimplifies it. But typically, you know what are we doing? We're personalizing it. Have you heard of a theory called the Solomon's paradox, where basically we're better at solving other people's problems than our own? Oh, man. 

50:35 - David Carson (Guest)
Yeah, is that true? Yeah, so Solomon's paradox. 

50:38 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
We intuitively often know or basically biasedly you know, more often than not probably biasedly know what the answer to the problem is. What happens when we personalize it? We go into all of our stuff down unresolved psychological data that we've kind of neglected, we've exiled. I'm going to bring that back in. What do we do? We banish it from the kingdom, we exile it, we send it away. We do everything in our power to deflect it. 

51:06
What's the easiest way to do that. Step out of it. Let it be somebody else's problem. Don't filter it through your eyes. If someone else were doing this, how would they approach it? That's not always a need to fill in, because then we feel inadequate a lot of times. 

51:21 - David Carson (Guest)
You need that outside perspective to help you see some of the things that you might not be seeing for all of those reasons that you said. 

51:28 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
That's the $100 answer right there. 

51:30 - David Carson (Guest)
You need the outside perspective. Sometimes I have these techniques that I use for myself when I feel like I've gotten context wrong, and they're actually quite silly, but they work for me, so tell us more about that. 

51:43
So one is are you a fan of Seinfeld? You've certainly seen Seinfeld. Right, there's an episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza decides that he is going to do everything the opposite that day. So his intuitions, he has said at this point, have just been so bad, they have led him so astray and he's like what would happen if the decision I would normally make, what if I did exactly the opposite? And George ends up having like just the best day in that episode. 

52:13 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
Sometimes we get out of our own way right. Exactly, and so that's, literally mentally. 

52:20 - David Carson (Guest)
That's something that I, that I apply to myself, where I feel like if I'm just, you know, my head is up against the wall and I'm just not moving, you know, forward or sideways I am, I'm saying to myself, well, let's just do everything the opposite, right, and when I do that, it just it helps me see the context that I'm not necessarily seeing. So it's just a way for me to step outside myself, right, and to do that. And then there's another one that I do, which is I just call it the make it worse method, and that's essentially if I'm trying to get something to work and it's not working, um, I will often then try and make it worse rather than better, and that that can. That's sometimes does two things. One thing it will do is it will show me what really not to do, Right, and then, if I understand, like, well, why wouldn't you do those things? That helps me to figure out how to solve that. The other thing, though, that it does is, sometimes it really surprises you where what you've just done is you've actually created something new by trying to make something worse, right? So the thing that you were trying to do is no longer the consideration. You've just now made something new. I actually stumbled upon this. It was something that I would do, naturally, for myself, and I just thought it was a funny thing to do. 

53:33
But there was a story that I loved of the potato chip was actually invented that way. And it's a silly story, because there's a chef and he has this customer who hates his French fries. And every time this customer comes in he just complains about this chef's French fries and the chef is constantly trying to make them better, right he's. You know, are they too salty? Are they like what's? What's happening? How can I make these better for this customer? 

53:57
But it goes on for so long that this chef gets so frustrated that he decides to make the worst French fry ever, and so he cuts them thin, he burns them, he over salts them, and everybody loves him, and he obviously hasn't made french fries. He's just now invented the potato chip, so so by just sort of employing that like how can I make this thing worse for him? It was obviously out of frustration, you know, he was able to invent something new right in that. So so the way that I see context is like if I feel like I'm not quite grasping the context and understanding, like how I'm sort of thinking through this problem set. I just need, like I need, dumb techniques that will try and help me understand it right a little bit, a little. 

54:40 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
There's mental models of ways to think about how to get me there so often we're looking at that idea of creativity with trying to find that originality we kind of touched on that before also where, you know, we're almost trying to poke the muse, so to speak, to get her to spit out this original thing rather than allowing the original thing to arise, like that situation. 

55:02 - David Carson (Guest)
Yeah, and I think there are probably misperceptions about what originality is right, because I think there's this mythology that we see in film or reading in books. 

55:13
Right, that's just like oh right, something strikes me from on high and right, all of a sudden there, and that's very rarely how really original ideas start. You know one one way to think about original is if you've ever had like a like this will date me now, because if you've ever seen like a Xerox copy machine yes, and let's say that you wanted to copy a picture on it, but then you wanted to make a copy of that copy of the picture on it and you just keep doing that the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy. Eventually, that last remaining, like hundredth time you've done that, is no longer that image. It is something completely original. 

55:51
Why I find that fascinating is is that people's attempts to copy something. It becomes original simply by the fact that they're terrible at copying it right and like. There's originality that comes from that. Like we listen to the Beatles because they were terrible at trying to mimic black rock and roll musicians from the United States. You know, we get all sorts of original things that are sort of built on the shoulders of giants, but they were trying to copy something, they were just terrible at copying it Like that I find fascinating. Embrace the suck. 

56:27 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
Yeah, exactly. Sometimes that's one thing I've learned, you know, as a creative throughout life, is just embrace the suck, you know, let it shine through and don't try to perfect it. You know, mastery sometimes comes from all of the failures. 

56:41 - David Carson (Guest)
That's right, and there's almost like a beginner's mindset for that, like I'm a musician by trade. That's how I started. I was a pianist composition major and I was also into design and hacking. I was always creating something. But I was a music kid and I remember being just sort of hit in the gut when I would hear something like Tom Waits, where the guy can't play piano or sing to save his life, and yet when he touches the keys, when he sings the song, like I will never be able to create that, like there's just there's nothing in my learned experience that's going to get me to do that. And so in that instance, like him, just truly being who he is is one thing, but the other is, you know, he chose. Like he said, I don't know how to play piano, I'm not really a great singer, and yet this is what I'm going to do and just by nature of almost being I don't know if it's naivete, I don't know if it's beginner's minds, like whatever that is right. 

57:36
It's that they decided that they're going to apply what their point of view is to this thing, that they don't know this very unlearned way right To do something, and in art oftentimes that's just magical, like you really get good stuff right out of that. 

57:52
But then you also find that right in science where you know you will have people who have a very expert opinion on how things ought to be, the way that they've always done things, and then you'll have somebody outside of that that will say, hey, what if right? And then all sort of scoff at that and go, oh, that's not the way that you would do it, and yet they create something incredibly original. Like there are so many different instances and real stories of where you've seen that happen. So, like in that context, originality comes from. I have a point of view around something that I know nothing about and yet the conditions were right, where either over time or the environment that was already there accepted that idea, got curious about it right and wanted to try and make that something that they would study or make real right. And in none of those instances was originality gained by somebody going off on a mountaintop, being struck by lightning right and coming back with a large breakthrough idea right and coming back with a large breakthrough idea. 

58:52 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
So from that perspective, david, how or what would you suggest creates that environment for an individual? Or, from your perspective, what does it for you? 

58:57 - David Carson (Guest)
What does it for me is when I'm around people that are really open to talk about weird things in weird contexts, not to waste time, just feel like that, the people that are willing to kind of do that. It's like you're in a band and you're going to create a new song and you don't want to create the song that you just created last week. You want to create something new and if the people in your band are really willing to experiment, to throw out new ideas right, things that you can kind of add to like, that's a really great environment with which to create new things, and I would want that right for everybody. So that's kind of that's what I'm looking for and where I find that most applicable are people who are just not rigid in their thinking. 

59:41
You know rigid thinking tends to just shut everything down and you will only optimize. You'll make things better around the edges. You know it's. It's just not, it's not enough. You know it's really people that have a different set of skills that you don't have and have a point of view that is not your own, but yet you're all open enough to to to sort of bend each other's ideas right into new forms and shapes that everybody kind of sees as being valuable. Like you couldn't have done that by yourself, you did that because this group thought the way that it thought. That created the way that it creates. 

01:00:16 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
You know, in that regard, most creative endeavors, we always witness the end game, the outcome. You know what role does iteration play in that process? 

01:00:26 - David Carson (Guest)
for you then, that's an important one. I think iteration is key for all of it. For me personally, when I'm doing stuff like this, I'm looking at first that seemed like my first instinct is that's a really dumb idea. Let's test it. Can I actually? Can I test this in a very simple way? And if it falls down, fine, great. Like new information, right, let's move on. Or like, let's refine. So in that instance, like iteration is just key, like every step of the way, right. And then sometimes, when you're iterating, you'll actually get to a point where you feel like you actually can't iterate anymore, and so then you have to make a judgment on this just isn't working, or right. You start to apply some different methods to maybe kind of turn it upside down. Think about things that are maybe a little more counterintuitive. Right To push that forward. But iteration is just super key. It's never, you know, it's not a waterfall, right. It just. It happens over time and in iterations. 

01:01:20 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
So I kind of teed you up on that in your pitch. You talked about that Bob Ross approach to painting in happy accidents. Love that. Expand on that a little bit for us. You know, what role do those happy accidents play in finding that creative space and allowing for that fluid, adaptive, active iteration to happen? 

01:01:39 - David Carson (Guest)
I think we see this everywhere, where a mistake becomes the thing right, and we're all taught to fear mistakes. Yeah, and yet mistakes are like we enjoy the chocolate chip cookie today because that was a mistake. Yeah, right, the story she's trying to create, her famous chocolate cookie, does not have this particular type of chocolate in the pantry to make it and decides to put in a different kind of chocolate, which is this Nestle bar thing, and and it doesn't melt and it doesn't create her cookie. It creates something new, right, it creates the chocolate chip cookie. It's a chocolate chip cookie. 

01:02:22 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
What would we do without? 

01:02:24 - David Carson (Guest)
it, yeah, and it's just like you know. It's just one of those things where you really like my God, like all the things that we enjoy. Embrace the suck right. 

01:02:34 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
Yeah, exactly, sometimes the suck doesn't taste so bad. 

01:02:38 - David Carson (Guest)
But here's the thing. Here's the thing, though. Like think of all the things that we're not able to enjoy because people threw that mistake away. Yeah, right, and I feel like there's just so much opportunity for us to experience new things if people would just embrace those mistakes and at least let other people experience those, like get over the fear of feeling dumb and let people experience the mistake, and there's plenty of evidence that should give you confidence that that's okay. 

01:03:08 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
Yeah, Kind of pivoting here a little bit, but from a business perspective, one of the greatest pieces of business advice I ever got was don't overly associate or identify with the business. Let it have a life of its own. Same with creative process. So often we tie that identity to it that it doesn't live and breathe its own life. 

01:03:28 - David Carson (Guest)
Yeah, that's true, business is a tough one because everybody feels like they have to put on their serious face and their serious suit. Right, and it's not as if you want to be undisciplined, it's not as if you don't want to have the same level of judgment and scrutiny right around things that are quite, quite important. But if you don't sort of limit or at least loosen up your idea of what those constraints are right for a business, you're most likely set up for failure right. In that regard, and especially if you're trying to do something really hard, right, like it's somewhere in there you have to have this ability to loosen the constraints right. What I mean by loosening constraints is it's somewhat counterintuitive, because when you're trying to solve the constraints right, what I mean by loosening constraints is it's somewhat counterintuitive, because when you're trying to solve a problem, sometimes one of the easiest things you can do is say, well, what's constraining essentially the outcome? Right, that I need to have happen, like what in the current thing that I have, what's constraining it right? And when you just loosen that constraint or just get rid of it right altogether, you're like, oh well, they're done, done and done right. And that might seem like a silly thing to do or to think about, but that actually helps you think about what the solution might be. 

01:04:38
In a very rigid way of thinking you're like well, this is my set of instruction sets, right, these are the constraints that I've been given, and nobody really thinks about loosening those things up. Right, and in business you could actually really fear that you might want to do that. There's something about the culture of business that just implies that your brain operates in a certain capacity, within a certain mode, and yet the companies that you see as being highly successful companies tend to be very creative, right Like how they actually approach problems and how they approach I mean everything from like doing their operations and everything that company tries to pull off, all of the hard stuff. Somewhere right In those organizations are people who are actually thinking a little outside of how a business, how you would think a business would think or operate, like even somebody who's just doing just like I'm the supply guy or I'm the accountant, right Like there are all sorts of ways that those people can really think about what they're doing in ways that are highly creative and non-rigid. 

01:05:33
So I think for most people, this is where mediocrity, I think, really comes from is that people have a misperception of how things actually succeed. Their pattern recognition to see success maybe is limited potentially, or they don't fully understand because they've seen the wrong movies or they've read the wrong books, right, that sort of mythologize, right how things actually happen. And so mediocrity kind of sets in when people just sort of accept what they think the norm is, and so I think businesses that really thrive are ones that aren't really interested in that. That's not even a consideration. Right, they're really looking for outsized gains, right, it's just like how can I maximize, like, what's my ROI, like what's a big impact that I can get that doesn't require a ton of work, right, necessarily for us to do like and shortcuts become like a way for brilliant people to sort of figure out how I can get things done without a lot of money. Those types of people I think are really valuable in companies Infinitely. 

01:06:31 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
And I'm going to let that stand. So, as we kind of wrap up here today, I feel like we're running our arc intuitively. If you were to offer three tips or three innovative ideas of how we can embrace our dumb ideas for more adaptive, creative thinking, what would those three methods or whatever, how many methods or tips be? 

01:06:54 - David Carson (Guest)
I think one would be. First thing to think about is just simplicity. That's always a good place to start. How can you essentially just uncomplicate whatever it is you're trying to do, right? Just how do you cut through complexity and find the simplest solution possible? That's one right. That's very, very simple place to start. The other is also very simple. It's around this notion of asking the big, dumb questions like challenging assumptions, so like if you're going to unlock unexpected insights, you know you're going to do that by asking questions that others just ignore or miss or are too afraid to ask. That's a big, important one. And then the third, which is also like. 

01:07:37
These are kind of for me, like the beginning templates. There's this idea of approaching everything through a beginner's mind and this actually helps you to see new perspectives. Right, inner's mind, and this actually helps you to see new perspectives right. Essentially, like the expert that's in you has sort of drawn a box around itself and you need new perspectives, you need to see things from a different point of view. So how can you approach problems with fresh eyes, right? It's like free from assumptions and expertise and bias. Essentially those are like the three, like go-tos, that are like the really simple ways to think asking questions so that you can understand, and then always asking yourself if you can step outside and see new perspectives and if you can't find somebody that can help you see that new perspective? 

01:08:19 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
So, to wrap everything up, today, if you were to offer just one most valuable lesson you have learned about softening that blow when we fear looking dumb, what would that be? 

01:08:32 - David Carson (Guest)
I would probably sum this up with something that was said to me by a friend when we were at dinner. We were both having really hard time with the companies that we had created. They had gone to a certain level. We loved where they were headed, but we didn't feel like we were smart enough to take them to the next level and we were frustrated and we remarked that why was it so much fun and why did it seem so easy or easier when we started all of this? And he said you know, david, you will never meet an idiot who isn't having a good time. You will never meet an idiot who isn't having a good time. 

01:09:12 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
Oh, that's a good one, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Embrace your inner idiot that's my takeaway today. And laugh Words to laugh, right? You know we all like to laugh when somebody is kind of cutting it up, so never be afraid to laugh, well, thank you. Thank you, my friend, for sharing some laughs and some brilliant insights with us. I truly appreciate this conversation yeah, this is fun, Jeffrey. 

01:09:37 - David Carson (Guest)
Again, thank you. 

01:09:38 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
Let's get together again soon. Let's find another one to chop it up with. Yeah, sounds good. Well, thank you very much. Where can our listeners reach out to you and find out more about? 

01:09:49 - David Carson (Guest)
Dumbify Best place is just on my website, david-carsoncom, and on there you can sign up for the Dumbify newsletter, which is free and every week there's sort of like tools for better dumb thinking, sort of a curated collection of models. But yeah, you can find me there. 

01:10:06 - Jeffrey Besecker (Host)
Such a great resource. I know I've found great value in reading that every week now and going in and finding those brilliant insights. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that with us. Thanks, jeffrey, we'll talk again soon, my friend.