Iconic Through Nature with Jamie Mustard Part 2 (of 2)
“Nature is a relief from pain..If you’re dealing with any sort of situation in life where you feel troubled, you can go into nature for two or three hours and you will feel like you took a shower on the inside.”
YOUR KEY INSIGHTS FROM jamie
Jamie Mustard is an expert on getting thru, and making it stick. He is the world’s leading authority on perception in the physical world. Steeped in the worlds of technology, product engagement, and the creative arts, Jamie consults with leading companies, CEOs, creative artists, etc., getting their messages, products, brands and ideas to STAND OUT to their desired audiences. He helps build focused and immediately effective business practices to help you get heard. In his bestselling and O.W.L Award-winning book, The ICONIST: The Art and Science of Standing Out, he uses case studies in business and pop culture, in addition to his extensive scientific research, to explore how BLOCKS™ solve one of our most crucial problems: Being made invisible.
digital connectivity is not TRUE connectivity
“We're all creative souls, no matter what we do. Whether we’re in science, engineering, or accounting…we're all creative souls. It’s not a coincidence that some of our greatest artists, 70 years ago, started going out to the Hamptons in New York. It's not a coincidence that some of the world's greatest writers reside in small towns. They do it because they're close to nature, and they do it because there's a lack of distraction, and they do it because it focuses us. So let's look at the extreme opposite end of the extreme presence and calm of nature.
One of the things that I talk about in the book is isolation research I did about people in supermax prisons. This is the other opposite of nature: mass, extreme isolation. And there are severe mental effects that one experiences from extreme isolation. So when these people are being deprived of nature, there are predictable psychological manifestations based on serious studies that have been done about this. Here's what they experience: paranoia, rage, aggression, depression.
I believe that because zoom videos, social media, and electronics have replaced so much of our direct contact-to-contact human interaction, that we are all feeling lower levels of this isolation. I believe that that is a lower form of isolation, that is also creating lower forms of angst and feelings of rage, paranoia, aggression, and depression.
So what COVID has done is it's locked us all in. So we've been patterned over the last six months to get really used to being in our homes and really used to engaging with the world through isolating devices. The only true connectivity is you and I being right in front of each other and I can feel your breath on me, which we're not supposed to be doing right now. Other than that, you're not actually connected, it's a lie... Electronic connectivity is not the 200,000 years of human evolution connectivity.
So I have great concern that we're gonna be boxed into this - that we're going to open up, and people aren't going to get right out there. I was going into nature finding municipal trails that our state did not shut down from the beginning of COVID, three, four, five times a week. The more of the lockdown, the more I was out. I just want to encourage everyone listening to this: you need to get out there, and you need to stay out there, and you need to re-pattern yourself to being out there and you need to be out there more than ever before if you truly want to be yourself. Electronic and digital connectivity is not connectivity, it's isolation. The only thing that gives us real feelings of connectivity is actually being in a natural environment or having face-to-face human contact.”
Nature as a pain reliever
“It's actually a little bit emotional for me…we have this incredible park on the east side of Hollywood, and I think the wealthy or more elite sections of Los Angeles maybe look down on a little bit. I was taking the bus there by myself by the time I was seven years old, and I wasn't in school. I spent several days a week losing myself in the creeks and mountains of that park as a way to deal with the pain of poverty. I never thought about it before, no one has ever asked me about it before. But even there's a park near where I grew up with Downtown LA that's full of junkies and gang members and homeless people. It's a really beautiful park near downtown Los Angeles.
It's beautiful with the beautiful palm trees and it's is surrounded by a concrete jungle, but it looks like an oasis. The junkies and the hustlers and the prostitutes and the gang members.. they're not looking to congregate to a cement courtyard. They all go to the park. Why? Because even though it's just a sliver, it's their evolutionary self. When we're in pain, we all gravitate to a natural spot. It's a disgusting natural spot because it's the only one there, and there's so much poverty and so much pain there, but it's packed with people. Why? Because nature gives you some relief from your pain. When I was scared, I would go to the bigger part and I would hunt for lizards and salamanders. And I don't know how I survived it. I started doing that when I was seven years old. I would take the bus or I would literally walk three to five miles to the entrance to Griffith park and stay there all day.
It's relief from pain. So I was going into the park, I was in such... I was in a hyperbaric chamber of a illiteracy, neglect, poverty, dirt, grind, heat, concrete and synthetic environments. I felt in-tuned, and so I really do think that it's more than just making you present, I really think that it is a relief from pain. It is a bomb. If you're dealing with any sort of situation in life leaving you troubled or disturbed, you can go into nature for two or three hours and you will feel like you took a shower on the inside.
I was going to that park out of desperation. I need to be away from this, I need relief, I need shade, I need green, I need animals. I need to be seeing something that makes me feel alive and not like I'm warehousing myself in my own body on a conveyor belt until I die.”
Jamie’s 3 best practices - going a different way
“I would say three things: One is show up. Just show up every day. I believe that genius is showing up and doing a little bit of work towards what you care about every day. Genius is showing up applied. Show up early if you can, but show up. Second, is visualization. If you work and you're not visualizing where you want to go and you're not strategizing and planning where you want to go, and you're just working hard, you're never gonna get there. You have to do visualization along with the work. Lastly, take massive action.
I should not be here. There was nothing special about me, I should not have been here. I showed up, no matter how many times I got kicked down. Einstein said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I did the same thing over and over again, different ways until I got the result that I wanted, and I was willing to be kicked down for seven years, as long as I was going a different way. Everything can be figured out. Show up, visualize, take massive action.
And then the last thing that I would say, and I never talked about this, is what I did is I with to my heroes, Malcolm Gladwell, Dan Pink, Michael Lewis. I looked at their work, and I looked at my work. And how bad it was. This is 12-15 years ago. And I thought, I'm not gonna give it up until I can look at my work and compare it to my heroes. I reverse engineered what they did, focused on my talents, so I was different than them. When I get as good as them, and the world is still saying no and I can't get a book deal and no one will let me in the door, then I'll quit. But not until I’m as good at the them, and I'm still getting rejected. I'll tell you this, I probably got about a fourth or maybe even a fifth as good as them, and the world broke wide open for me. We can look to the people that have what we want to have, are what we want to be, and we can compare our work to theirs. We can move towards their standard based on our strengths…go tunnel vision on your strengths.”
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