Smiling Isn't a Lightweight Practice

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0:37lee welcome it's great to have you on behind the title um i've tried to get you on there for a while um for those that don't know you although i'd be hard-pressed to think anyone in our industry wouldn't because you are certainly out there that's flattering this the the research reports said yes they don't i don't know i don't know you've you've definitely built your personal brand and the brand of your business, which is Global Street Art, you'll come and talk about. But maybe if you could just give a bit of an introduction to you, your background, and then why it was important for you to come on to behind the title, we can get stuck straight into it.

1:14Background to me, my official job title was, and probably always will be amusingly, CEO and janitor. I'm a co-founder of a company called Global Street Art. We're Europe's leading hand-painted advertising company. We're media owners. We have 100 walls in the UK, offices in France, Spain, Belgium, and our headquarters are here. We paint in 26 countries around the world, and we're a media owner. So mostly our role is what I would say execution partner. Clients give us artwork and say, go and paint this. Valentina gives the artwork, says, go and paint this, and it's on our real estate. Over time, increasingly, clients would start using us as I'll call a feasibility partner.

1:54they would give us there was instead of go and do this they would say hey can you do this can you have chips exploding out of my wall can you make my wall smell of strawberries and so you say yes because i don't have an advertising background i'll get to my background promise um we said yes to lots of different projects and and learned lots of different techniques as a result and so increasingly because we did all these fun things projection mapping on murals and uh um uv paint and uv lighting that over time brands would say hey you know what would you do for us so we spoke to adidas for the manchester marathon last year we said we've got a real estate team we'll find you a new wall on the running route we'll paint the road because it will look really good in the drone shots when people run over it and we realized at that point you know it's lovely to be a creative partner but we're an agency that's creative but we're not a creative agency we didn't want to compete against the agencies creative agencies that are really good advocates for our media channel so we said how can we work with everyone in the creative industries without competing against anyone we made up a concept of principle as inspiration partner because at least in theory if you're inspiring you help teams get more out of themselves and what that does is it allows us to meet clients earlier on at different points in a buying cycle to have productive great conversations where essentially they might not have known we existed before and they might be more interested to work with us so from a marketing funnel point of view we've got a bunch of activities that are awareness and interest so I built because I've been a collector ever since I was a kid an archive a gallery museum in our office in old street in zone one so we host people for creative off-site meetings I then teach creative thinking workshops.

3:22That's really fun. I love doing that. We can talk about the techniques if we get into it. But everyone really, frankly, is really creative. But we're often not taught how to think creatively in school. There are frameworks that make that easier. And then I built an archive within the gallery. So that's a personal project. Of which, by the way, if you haven't been to see this archive, it is incredibly impressive. It's like an old school advertising archive. 50 years ago, every advertising agency had its own archive. And then everyone junked it because of the internet. And now a problem that creatives have is if a brand sets three agencies the same brief, they often get overlapping mood board images.

4:01The same images come up in different independent agencies. Because everyone's getting images from page one or two of Google or similar shared Pinterest boards. And they're our favorite concepts and ideas that float around the industry because it's a culture. The internet is very good at showing what's popular. Archives are very good at saving what's important. And so building a physical, real archive by choosing the objects that we keep and collect is really useful if you're working with and seeking to inspire creative people, be they artists, be they working in the creative industries, be they from any other walk of life.

4:31Inspiration and creativity is useful in every industry. And so I've been teaching creative thinking now for a couple of years, max, probably only really a year, year and a half. It's gone really well. And I'm doing it to much bigger groups. We're doing it with you guys, if I can talk about that. but it's a really fun thing to do. And so that's where the company is at now. But it's the media company, hand-painted advertising, but we've got these really fun inspiration techniques. Why was it important to come on? Because I've known you for some time, Lee, and I'm a huge advocate for the work that you do in the industry.

5:05I think we share a lot of commonalities in our thinking. But I think when we initially spoke, you know we we got to a point where you were you know quite up for coming onto the podcast yeah what what what triggered you to it gives me an opportunity to talk about things i might not other normally be able to talk about when you do industry related stuff and you're quite narrow and focused on the product there's that's that's one great conversation sure but i

5:37um i took a i was always interested i wondered if i was neurodivergent i've never really talked about that so much in public so i got an uh i saw a potential diagnosis for asd autumn spectrum disorder uh in my early 40s and it was pretty clear so many friends had said hey neurodivergence etc etc so i thought it'd be quite fun to know if that was how i think um and then i got the certificate for it and not all that much changed afterwards it wasn't a big bombshell it didn't change my habits it came from a super supportive awesome background but it did allow me and make me step back and think more about my thinking and habits towards thinking and so many of your guests have already said one of the reasons they want to be on the show is some of what they've learned through that journey might be useful or helpful to others and that's certainly not unique to me selfishly one of the reasons i really wanted to come on is because we talk about and you ask different questions i can do the standard global street i stuff with my eyes closed but this is different conversation about habits and thinking ultimately that forces me to think about it in a different way and there's a bunch of things that I'm really excited and interested about personally but it overlaps with work that's that notion of inspiration partner where I've not really been able to talk about the frameworks or things that I think have been really helpful so I've been I've gotten much happier in the last six months since I did a silent retreat but not because I did a silent retreat because of one thing one of the sitters meditating guides basically said in that week of six days of silence uh he was talking about a buddhist monk fitch nat han who passed away in the last few years but practiced in france had a really different southern france really difficult childhood growing up in the vietnam war amazing guy i'd read a book of his when i lived in los angeles doing a previous job working in finance around 2005 called wisdom for cooling the flames and it super helped me um because when i was in my early 20s i got punched in the face I had essentially I have a metal plate that got put in like it was a thing at the time that could have happened to anyone um but I went through post-traumatic stress afterwards but I didn't know I did and it was something that until afterwards and someone gave me some advice that enabled me to see the changes that had happened in my thinking were because of the events and they made sense for humans in a smaller hunter-gatherer society but they weren't serving me today and so I read this particular book by that monk called Wisdom for Calling the Flames and the simplicity of the advice in that book was smile gently and breathe slowly well that's great and but it's a completely different way of cooling the flames than the western idea of like punching the pillow get it out let it out the rage room you're practicing the same thing you're watering the wrong plants by taking that route to dealing with those challenges and so being able to sit with it and be comfortable with it and process your feelings and emotions wasn't something that came naturally to me growing up as an autistic kid undiagnosed didn't matter but I wasn't great at recognizing, identifying, processing and learning from my own emotions.

8:31It takes training to be able to do that. And so the one thing that I heard on the silent retreat was smiling is not a lightweight practice. And it took time to sit with that. And so now if I'm walking around with a grin, we're quite cynical about happiness in the UK. We have a phrase, an inane grin. Someone's walking around with an inane grin on the face. they might be you don't know what they're going through or dealing with and they probably you know it's not easy to be happy and when people say it's a choice i do believe there's a lot of choice in it but there's also the influence of external factors ultimately it is a choice to better your situation from whether wherever you are today but that's different from anywhere else in comparison is the thief of joy so looking at where other people are and trying to so it's what lessons can you learn from that and how can you build yourself out of that and that one really helped me smiling is not a lightweight practice because as it resonates and I echo with that one I'm like actually I can now smile because of the tool that is and what that gives me because I'm working on that not that I expect that to just quote unquote happen naturally without effort so there is putting effort into your own happiness which is why we said and I think this is why this is such an interesting podcast but also carries risk with it because depending on how you deal with whatever you've got and whatever you've been through are you using it as a this is a rockefeller quote a tombstone or a stepping stone is it a ticket to the pity party or a way out of here you know and that again remains interesting i love that uh comparison is the thief of joy yeah you talk about uh your diagnosis so that yeah just very quickly just what was the diagnosis again uh ast autism spectrum disorder and what a fun test that was Okay, and if you can explain to people what does that mean specifically?

10:26This is a really hard question because I don't know. Okay, what's your interpretation of it? Okay, well, the first thing is like there's a recognition that I get is that I may think differently to other people and there are reasons for that. I would suggest you do think differently. But I'm not necessarily aware of it, external, internal. So I walked around for a very long time, assuming everyone was the same and being frustrated with people as a result. How do you not see this? How do you not think like that? Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. But then we're all shaped by our experiences as well. And that mellows over time.

10:58So what I got from it was that a patience that comes with it to be more patient, not just with other people, but also actually funnily enough with myself to be kinder on myself where, you know, been berating or like, you know, toxic fuel. You beat yourself up a lot, but you get a lot done because of it, you know. so um yeah so as part of that and we spoke about this before you came on there's an element of you being high functioning yeah and um what is it that people miss when they either reference the term high functioning yeah versus how it actually feels to you on the inside oh well ah there is an epistemological gap in the i told you we're gonna go there and you're gonna need to you're gonna need to get into you so this is the challenge i think of the problem of labels right and a label is a simplification it's a communication device but it's not meant to convey everything so the label high functioning interestingly i think it it's based on output it's based on like you got your trousers on in the morning you you were able to do this you found an accountant you realize you didn't have to do everything or whatever that means but i i think high functioning moving neurodivergence aside high functioning provocation number one i think a lot of our conversations have lost the concept of a provocation i don't know if what i'm about to say is right or wrong and everyone's so you know cancellation risk etc etc provocation where was i going with this um wouldn't everyone aspire to be high functioning okay i don't know about that what does high functioning mean high functioning against what high functioning in our society today well do i agree with everything about how our society functions no do i think there are aspects where it could be kinder how would i fit a process towards that high functioning where because how whatever my behavior or thinking is would manifest completely differently in different environments different societies different people have got such different norms the reason podcasts even exist is people think differently and we are curious how other people think um that's why i got you on it yeah and it's expressed through words and labels i don't even know where to go with that afterwards okay well take it as a provocation what do you think well i i guess for me when i look at high functioning and and i would definitely suggest that maybe i fit into that bracket i haven't been diagnosed and and you know i'm personally of the view I was going to deflect with humor and go Danny Wise come on great host great kisser but it wasn't going to work the second time either but I think because you know I have my stepson who is 10 and we thought long and hard about diagnosis for different things and the school recommend and we haven't done it because we don't want to purposely attach a label but what I do think is when I say high functioning I believe it's the ability to not only be emotionally tuned in yeah um but also have uh i guess the skills to work across multiple yeah different um projects yeah um initiatives or yeah one by one i can't multitask any better or worse than anyone else it's just like task switch we can task switch quite quickly exactly but the problem with that sometimes is i i certainly know with me yeah i put myself under an immense amount of pressure oh yeah for sure because high functioning means that i will want to deliver everything uh not necessarily that's me that is right you're right of course of course as you say it's different for different people it's where you seek to end your personal responsibility and realize you have to rely on other people to get on we are people because of other people we are a society and so you feeling that you need to take everything on yourself i've been through that and still but when you start a company you need three character types you need the technician the person who decides to start the cupcake company because cupcakes are fantastic right they make great cupcakes i can make good cupcakes i'm going to start the company the technician knows the product then you need the the hustler the person who goes out and sells finds a market just gets the business going then you need the manager manages the processes the people the cash flow you don't get all of those things in one person but when you start a company or co-founder or a very small team you do lots of all of those things and play to your strengths but also your weaknesses Over time, as the company grows, you find your groove.

15:26You're meant to focus on the things that you're better or best at and find other people to do that, to do the things that you're not so good at. In order to get there, you have to realize you don't have to be good at everything and to stop beating yourself up. If you take too much personal responsibility, it's all on me, it's on my shoulders. You go the very common risk of entrepreneurs, which is burnout, which is unhealthy, and anyone in a high-pressure, high-flying individual. The label really matters. And it goes back to what you said about high functioning. So high functioning entrepreneurs, whatever the label is, how you see yourself affects your outcome and performance in creative cognitive tasks.

16:02people perform better if they self-identify as an artist versus if they self-identify as an office worker the more confident you are about your creativity the better your results are at creative tests and so high functioning matters because it's a bit of a vague or amorphous concept and to dig into it i would want to ask what are the attributes that make someone high functioning because i don't know if i want to be high functioning or labeled or not because there is a negative stigma in the You're this thing, but within that, you're up here. Great, well done. You've got that thing that you shouldn't have, or it's not a good thing.

16:40But within that, you're all right. That is a negative stigma about the label that I don't think serves the people that have it necessarily. So I'd like to pick in what the attributes are, because if that means clear cognition, good with words, that kind of thing. Okay, cool. That kind of works, right? I'll take some of that sort of stuff. but it's the concept and how it's packaged today and and that was the pity party comment that we said before as well the the not the stigma the stigma the associations that go with all of those labels you want to choose the ones for yourself that give you the best outcome for what you're trying to do and high functioning doesn't serve me as a label for what i want to be yeah of course so what i'm i'd love for people to understand is during this time that you've built this incredible business um and you've changed and pivoted your career has there been a moment where you know on the outside everything looks rosy but on the inside you're holding you're barely holding together because i can imagine starting a company yeah there's definitely been quite a lot of moments like that but they tend to be short-lived when i first thought about this question i really struggled because i it's not difficult to see when i'm struggling i'm not good i like the struggling bit when it's not going well plenty of those stories struggling bit where it looks great on the outside less of that of course there's times when like if the company goes through a restructure and you know you've got to deliver some horrible news you've got to put on the brave face and the mask about it and your guests have talked about that before that stuff is you know but but generally speaking if there's a lot going on and it's really getting on top of my shoulders it's one way or another it kind of manifests and people will see it it's why i haven't drunk for two years because i did in my early 30s i was definitely a one-man stag do i was chaos i was really good to party with but don't do that guy anymore that doesn't age well at all um because that tension has to come out somewhere or one way or another one man stag do i'm gonna pick up on that one never heard that one before let's get let's let's let's dig deep into that no no we won't um but but again i just want to big dig dig a little bit deeper because like talk to talk to us about a moment when it has been really tough and last year okay last year so i'm not the founder of global street i'm the co-founder it was not my idea when i was so after i finished science finished my phd was about 25 got a job at american finance company moved to los angeles it was a fast track management program where every four months you did a different project you learn corporate finance and accounting they you it was so educational i learned so much at that company met my later business partner investor co-founder conrad great guy conrad's the silent guy i've never chairman chairman yeah uh and it was his idea and he backed me um and he basically said he had a great sense of humor he was just like look if it doesn't work out it's basically a tax right off like that is the vote of confidence i need uh come out passed away last year his uh his daughter is now who's brilliant is involved in the company and and so there was continuity and planning but that was the guy i started the company with and there were moments early on that now no one remembers uh in the earlier stages of the company like i remember meeting in his apartment and being around the kitchen table and learning from him and talking through aspects of the company and having a mentor and being able to to have someone to learn from who'd been there and done that and ultimately mental save you time you might get there in the end you probably will but if you can do it in three years not six get the experience you know and and um it was really hard without him because i lost a friend and i lost someone who was closer than just just a business partner he'd he'd really i owe him what i'm doing today i wouldn't be i can honestly say so easily i would not be doing this without him i couldn't have done this without him couldn't have got this far without him and wouldn't still be going without him on multiple occasions over the time and so losing him was not why i expected it to be so in the short-term medium and longer time this conversation has taken a very different pace the minute you spoke about that okay so i've gone from what i saw which was lee yeah buzzing with ideas yeah super excited to be here um um sharing some incredible insight and now i'm poking your squishy underbelly and now i've got humor deflect no but now i've got lee which actually i'm like i've never seen this lee before sure um so when when you i mean obviously you know loss and grief is hard for anyone yeah um you know was there uh you know and maybe you did say everything that you needed to say to conrad was there were there things that you wish you'd said before no i said everything i think i wanted to like and and he knew and and um yeah i i i did i got to say all the things that i needed to or wanted to and he he's sort of the same over time because we did it for so long and a working relationship with someone or getting to know someone or a life relationship of one guys or another with someone is it gives you enough opportunities to express things so i never felt that that was silent or missing and i got to say thank you many times and thank you was my was the message really was so if we think about um neurodivergency so i had someone on called will lavin who in the first series who suffers with a stammer um quite a severe stammer and and he was explaining to me one example uh where there are certain triggers in the workplace or in life which really set off his illness.

22:32And one of those, two examples he gave were, one, the smells. Oh, interesting. And the smells that he might, you know, pick up on in the office. Yeah. And they can sometimes really push them in one direction. Sure. Equally down to saying hello to someone because naturally, he's still figuring out how to say hello or his brain's still figuring out to say hello when just a normal person's walked past, said, all right, mate? And they're gone already and he hasn't even managed to say hello. So what I'd love to understand is what have you learned in the last year about your condition? And sorry, I say condition about, you know, your diagnosis.

23:10Sure. Where there are certain triggers that push you to either behave positively. Yeah. Or perhaps don't bring out the best in you. Certain triggers that have me behave. It could be workplace. Yeah, it will be old things that used to irritate me. There's always a difference between your reaction and your response. And your level of composure also depends on what's happening to you, with you at the time. I often say, people are like tea bags. You only really know what they're like when you stick them in hot water. It's a terrible quote, but someone will quote me on it. And there's a truth in that.

23:47But how much we can take depends on what's going on around us as well. So what have I learned about my triggers in the last year? Our brains are rehearsal machines. There's a quote I was thinking before. It's cells that fire together, wire together. You rehearse your thinking. Everything is practice for your habits, basically. Rockefeller quote, good habits are hard to start but easy to maintain. Bad habits are easy to start but hard to break. and each of those is a thread that becomes a rope that eventually...

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25:27Learning to disassociate the situation and how I think about the situation. So learning to be less harsh on myself as a result of those triggers has been a developmental goal. You talked about your behaviors and habits earlier on. And if you do them for long enough, the analogy I use is kind of the motorway. you're just used to driving down the motorway and you haven't got any other routes so that's addiction that's whatever it is that's the motorway you're not going to delete the motorway overnight you might crash the car but the motorway is still going to be there what you're actually trying to do is build a footpath next to the motorway that eventually becomes a path and a gravel track and a road and another motorway and an even bigger motorway and it's an interstate and so you're trying to practice new habits in order to spiral up the motorway original motorway is not going away that's still going to be there you can still fall back into those patterns quite easily and that's what those triggers do it's things that take you back to old you because they get something more like core fundamental or earlier you i was a friend's daughter's bat mitzvah last uh a couple of weeks ago best friend within 10 minutes of being in a synagogue i felt like i was 13 again i was so sweaty under a under the talus i was bored i was hot and i was bored and i hadn't been in synagogue for years and then i loved it but it took me realizing the trigger that i had was so ridiculous it was wonderful being in a community that and missing that experience and and shaking hands with and saying hello to people i don't know and hugging people i hadn't seen and friends of friends i hadn't seen for a long time and being there in like a shared and and how wonderful in judaism to be there around an ark like we're worshiping a book right that's cool it's prioritizing knowledge that's really lovely for a tribal old system of knowledge and how that's been passed down so what a privilege to have just got that by accident to have been born and had a consciousness grafted onto a human that got that situation you really lucked out on that tick that's great but the boredom was what got me because an old man sat next to me and he came and he said because the book for people that don't know is english and hebrew and a lot of people's hebrew is not that great and then you've got to be able to translate it but it's biblical hebrew so you're kind of on the back foot so one of the things you hear most in synagogue is someone comes in sits next to you and goes what page are we on and the common answer is i don't know i'm not sure what page we're on and then it all flooded back to me and then it was a trigger but it was hilarious and it was learning like not just you're going to have to trigger anyway but learning how to manage it or what it leads to i'll give you another one because it's really apt and actually for the last two years.

28:06A couple of years ago, a few years ago, I was at a music festival. It was too close to the speaker. I damaged my hearing on the left-hand side. I lost a quarter of my hearing on the left, just the top part of it. Still hear birdsong really well on the right side, but less so on the left side. Clearly was a good party. As a result, not the lost hearing, I got tinnitus. And so I got a permanent ringing on that side. Now at the start, that sucked. And I remember like putting my head in a sink next to the stream of running water from a running tap so I didn't have to listen to my own head and then over the last year in stages there's ways that you deal with it you tie it to breathing you accept it most people that have tinnitus I think it's 60-70 percent after a year report at least one positive side effect and that most common one is a change in perspective realizing your fallibility your humanity that you know another thing to remind you that there's a finite you know your your own finitude is a nice enough way to say it um and the frailness of your own body that you're not going to escape illness or age or you know death ultimately um and that's why the smiling is not a lightweight practice part going back to it becomes so important so with tinnitus i rebranded it my life alarm like if i stop hearing it i'm in trouble and now it's still there but i don't notice it very often i can go almost a whole day without thinking about it or noticing it but just rebranding it a life alarm now i laugh i chuckle over it and i'm quite glad it's there and if and i did have an and i was relieved because you can get hearing aids that can cancel it i did a test for it i nearly got it i thought you know what no i'm gonna keep it and and now i wouldn't get rid of it i had the same thing you probably won't see it as well uh it's very small and a little tooth a couple of months ago chipped front middle tooth tiny chip tiny chip uh and for nothing i wasn't even eating anything i was just driving at the time i noticed i was like oh i've lost some front tooth small amount of front tooth and i spoke to the dentist yes of course we can fill that in come on in sit in the chair went into the dentist sat in the chair and was like i kind of like this i don't think i'm ready to have a tooth shaved more to get a filling to hide something that i think could be characterful and the principle that runs behind all of it is a good friend of mine curtis curtis you know curtis i do i do am or fatty love your fate love your fate as if you'd chosen it so i kind of so i got i got yeah it's it's curtis would know who that came from definitely feels like a curtis comment yeah yeah yeah definitely feels like curtis comment so um all right let's switch it up a gear um you when we well again when we spoke we talked about with uh i guess your diagnosis and everything that you have experienced over the last couple of years building the business that sure you know there are ways and means uh that you manage that and you talked about creativity and play yeah um specifically as tools yeah um and you know you covered it at the beginning everyone can be creative and actually I think it can deliver you stronger output if you act and believe in that way um uh how do you explain that to someone who kind of dismisses it as oh it's a nice to have don't don't explain it to them show them go through to techniques give it half an hour try this come up with some ideas oh you had some good ideas you like that you might execute cool you proved it to yourself way stronger so when I teach creative thinking workshops I'm actually quiet most of the time I know that sounds quite funny now I'm on a podcast but it's really about the ideas that the people in the room are having and how they work together and building their confidence in creativity because fear nice quote is an inch deep but a mile wide things look really big and scary and then you take one step you realize it's not so bad you can keep going so it's reinforcing things that work to build people's confidence and mostly when I'm hired as a creative trainer I think it's to build people's confidence as much as it is about the techniques I think a mistake that we make in busy organizations is we fixate quickly on one idea pursue the idea and then it's good or it's not good or whatever that looks like good creative thinking comes in two forms divergent creative thinking you're open to ideas possibility lots of ideas convergent creative thinking you're aiming for something ideas are either useful because the idea is good or because it could lead you to a good idea the movement value of an idea often in busy environments we like i like that idea i don't like that can you change that that's not good oh that's all right it's it's up and it's down we we spar with each other's ideas and try and shoot them down in in architecture they call it a crit literally a criticism you you have your work your great ideas just torn down in front of you that's one way of thinking and it has a function but it's not the only way of thinking and good creative thinking if you're open to more possibility and also use and have the habit skill and practice of using ideas for their movement value instead of shooting them down because there's no motion if something's dead and shot down you can walk it around a little bit and you might find a better and different idea or a series of them and so the techniques that I teach are start with divergent creative thinking here's a technique to have a lot of different ideas and there's some really fun ways of doing it and often you use randomness to do it you choose random objects you choose random words whatever that might be and you force an association between a random object the this this headphone thing and a problem that you're trying to solve for so i'm not sure what that problem could be i was late i was worried i was going to be late today all right how do i force an association between this thing the headphone well it's audio so i set an alarm all right well that's a really easy one it might be that it's uh it's it's it's um it's a headphone it's at head height so i leave a note on my door as i'm going out or by my bedroom wake up at head height wake up early for that all i've done is rift off a thing to come up with some ideas to solve a problem that I've defined well.

34:01And some of those ideas will be good, and some of those ideas will be not so good. It doesn't matter. Because by giving them a little bit of space and oxygen and have people build on each other's ideas, you allow the movement value of the idea. Nice. Then you introduce ways of shaping those ideas. Then at the end of the process, towards the end, then you add the functional constraints from a clearly well-defined and articulated brief. And it doesn't need to be a brand. It could be a personal thing. I just don't want to be late for Danny's podcast. But you apply the constraints that mean you're more likely to be able to take action.

34:31But you do it with a wider base of ideas than just a single idea that you would have at the beginning that was a good idea or a bad idea, not the movement value of the idea. So by using the movement value and scribbling loads, there's so much writing that goes on, you just build up this pool of ideas. And there's loads of ways you can integrate AI and work with AI, but still you need the human, the judgment, et cetera, et cetera. That's a whole different conversation. But it's really fun. And at the end of 90 minutes, you end up with a room full of people who've all had some good ideas that they wouldn't have otherwise had because they've gone through a process to do it.

35:08This isn't rocket science. We just didn't learn it in school. And so by kind of teaching those things, and I use them myself every day. And funny enough, it's because I'm teaching, I've gotten so much better at using them because I have to demonstrate them. And it just becomes like a muscle in the end. And then at the end, it's like, that's what an inspiration partner should be. It's like, that's the idea. And how much of, or how much do you use creativity to help manage your diagnosis? Oh, I thought it was in a company and I was going to say less than I should. My diagnosis. Do you think that's a big part of how you manage it?

35:47I don't know if I do it consciously. I think I do it a lot. I probably do it a lot subconsciously, but through tools that I wouldn't know a creative thinking like humor or they are funny because humor requires you see the situation in a slightly different way so um I was trying to work that into a joke I didn't have one I mean I was working on the pub I was waiting I was waiting on something that I knew it was going to come but the reason I ask is because I suspect that most people will look at maybe more traditional medical recommendations sometimes whether that is through seeing someone external whether that is through medication but actually I look at you as an individual and I look at the uh passion enthusiasm attention you talk about the archive I know that's something that you dedicate a huge amount of time to yeah and I would I would I would suspect that that helps to fulfill some of those uh some of those either triggers 100 percent uh or it might help to absolutely slow you down a little bit yeah or channel that energy so i'm just i'm trying to help other people understand what are different ways that they could look to use creativity to their advantage to manage their condition if they are super interesting i mean fundamentally it calls to a point that hobbies are really good for you having other things that you do often that have no material value on purpose as well just side things side because you gain different forms of perspective and different tools always very jealous of brilliant musicians because they've got a completely different way of expressing their soul that i don't have i would love that i had it as a dancer lost it you know you still have it in your movement a little bit but you don't have the moves that you used to they're all tools for there's a lovely check proverb learn a new language gain a new soul and so whatever skill set or language you've got a way of expressing yourself is a different tool to deal with the harder aspects of the human condition that sounds a lot grander than i meant it to be no i think i think i think so to your question though creativity how to use creativity i think i probably do it most with humor really do because so there's there's there's there's in jewish thinking there was a brilliant book by rabbi called nilton bonder called yiddish a cop and it jewish head it defines four domains of knowledge the apparent realm of the apparent this book is here in front of me this literal book the thing that's what it looks like that's where it is that's a form of knowledge the hidden realm of the apparent is about metaphor this book is uh this book is heavy actually with its knowledge makes me think of it in a different way and that's what the random object stuff is doing it's using analogies metaphors jumping off points to have a richness of an understanding the third realm of knowledge is the hidden no the apparent realm of the hidden you can see the results but you don't know what's sitting underneath the data so you have to dig to understand that kind of stuff and so that's the looking for patterns understanding the drivers etc etc and then the really fun one is the the hidden realm of the hidden that's in a domain of knowledge where your previous experience doesn't help you you can't carry knowledge across you just don't know what you're doing and the advice in that situation is basically bump around try trial and error is a tool play is a tool there to understand and learn about your environment and the analogy that's usually given is you're walking around a dark cave you kick a candle oh you pick up the candle you happen to have a match so you lit the candle and then you can see a little bit and then you walk around again you bump into another candle so you do the same again and eventually you find all the candles you light up the cave you can see everything but it was the trial and error that got you there and so in dealing with my diagnosis or anything else that play that bump that not it's the part of the divergent creative thinking not knowing what not aiming straight for the solution but being having a bit of breath to allow you to learn things that are usually at the time useless i've gotten so many good things relevant to my job and how i did loads of different things from having that archive and it's not all the specific 100 ,000 objects in the archive it's what they make me think about other stuff there's two kinds of knowledge the stuff that you know that you know and the stuff that you know where you left it and today with i mean i spend like four or five hours a day on my phone five hours i think my face time was like the number it's so high so it's not only am i interacting with one singular object it's what else i'm not interacting with our phones deliver information in a feed a scroll we are not hardwired to remember stuff well that way in 90 minutes of a tiktok session watching a video for 10 seconds at a time you're watching 500 videos you're not going to remember most of that and that has implications for how and where brands but it will make you feel something you will get but i think you'll feel exhausted by the end of it because you've gone up you've gone down you've got it's just emotionally draining that's the doom scroll stuff if i if i get everyone's listening to this just close your eyes and imagine everything 10 objects around your bedroom you can do it because you know what your bedroom is we're basically we're built for maps we're built for spaces so having an archive physical real build archive means i know where i left certain information and knowledge so it's a really good way to retain more information because eventually i'm in the archive so much anyway don't need the folders anymore because i've practiced that that space in my head so many times you know a lot like it's it's how we learn we learn spatially by repeating a thing which is again why habits are so important and why you've got that old motorway but you've got to build a new habit yeah love it we've uh i mean we've covered off uh motorways i'm glad that more than anything we found an audience with urban planners i mean look uh i love i love the analogies um and i think sometimes they are incredibly helpful to people because i think that's what i talk about uh in my recovery is yeah ultimately i need to keep my side of the street clean i need to be able to you know course correct on my defects of character whatever they may be selfish self-seeking dishonest manipulative sure all those things that are part of me but i am just much more aware of them now yeah and therefore as you say i'm constantly working on that yeah and i can revert back yeah onto the other motorway yeah yeah i'm I'm not sure how we've got into urban planning, but hey, we've gone there.

42:08So I think it is really important and actually it kind of explains a bit more about why you created the archive. You covered it off at the beginning. Actually, it wasn't even so conscious. It was one folder or one object at a time. So as a kid, I got like a stamp collection or a small banknote collection from my granddad's best mate or a coin collection and then there were cigarette cards because everyone had cigarette cards. and it led into collecting other things and it was only really when I had the space and the room to do it in the last few years that really doubled down on building what that archive is, was and could be and it came from a realisation as a dancer as a dancer you have a shelf life, you hurt your knee you're done after a certain amount of time that's what that's going to look like, my back sore back, but with an archive it gets more valuable as it gets older because it's even harder to replace and it will outlast me I hope I hope I can give it somewhere or have it looked after totally but i'm banking my time and my effort so every time i make a new folder for the archive and it takes me a couple of hours it's then done and that folder exists for quote unquote forever more you know and so by doing that as a habit and a hobby and enjoying it and enjoying the filing i build this thing that only gets better over time because i because i think it's hard to repeat no totally i think it's a wonderful piece of ip that you've created um and people should definitely get in touch with you to go and have a tour how much do you reckon you've um how much reckon you've invested in building that archive so i know the answer to that and it's um less than people guess a lot less i like it being mysterious because then people never know um but i've collected a lot of stuff that's basically worthless i've had all like very low value as individual items there's just a lot of items but i've also got a really keen idea on what the market price should be for something, I think.

44:23Lee Bofkin: solution. And that is why Paylocity built a single platform to connect HR, finance, and IT with AI driven insights and automated workflows that simplify the complex and power what's next. Or as we call it, a delicious operational burrito. Yes, we do. Experience a one place for all your HCM needs, besties. So start now at paylocity.com slash one. Paylocity.com slash O-N-E. I think it's cool because I've collected so many things across so many categories of stuff. if I see something I think that is mispriced or cheap, when I bought all the pencil cases that were listed on eBay in like a three-day shopping spree, what's the price of a pencil case?

45:04£5,£10,£20, whatever someone lists it at. So if you're the person that decides all of a sudden all pencil cases less than£10 are cool and that's worth it, you can buy all of them in the UK almost overnight and then everyone that lists afterwards puts the price up. So you can move the market for collectibles unless it's like such high volume stuff, Happy Meal toys, Pokemon cards, et cetera. It's hard to move the market for that. But if you're really into like obscure things, other people might not be seeing. And then you realize actually, eBay's probably been, and other channels, but really it's eBay, has been a flow of stuff for many, many years.

45:37Things that used to show up don't turn up anymore. Things that are being listed today won't be listed in five years time. And so it's this, this human, we don't really understand or appreciate as individuals, myself very much included, just quite how much stuff we as a society and societies have made. And our museums don't have the space to store it. There's amazing stuff out there. You'll probably know it. There's a place in West London which is advertising the Museum of Brands. I guess to an extent similar. I actually love that. I think it's an amazing space. The challenges of that as a space is if you're not, if you don't know what you're looking at, it doesn't give you all that much context.

46:26There's a time tunnel. So you see things over time. But the stories in the objects are so fascinating. But, you know, when you're pushing a pram of screaming kids. Well, that's it. It's not you're you're not. I think that's what's great about a night at the gallery with you is that you get you to explain what sits behind a lot of these objects and help people understand. and also contextualise about how that works in the world of advertising. And all that stuff is, is usually things I've learnt from other people that have been there and they've said, oh, did you know all records were released, singles were released on a Friday, so on a Thursday, because everyone got paid on a Friday.

47:00Oh, yeah, and like, it just didn't know that. And then a lot of it, this is really fun, but it's also really acute for our generation because the younger generation is growing up now. Technological change has been so, so big that you've got, I have people in their early to mid-20s that don't know what a phone card is. right well what do you mean you don't know a phone they are right and and so many kinds of objects and things that we've digitized on our march to using the singular object for five hours a day um we just don't culture doesn't go backwards we don't remember what was produced 20 years ago if you were born today you're just not going to know so it's showing those and the thing that's really interesting about that is the penny drops you know well of course they did it like that they would have to they didn't have this but you just don't think about it yeah it's a lot of that um I guess as we start bringing this to a bit of a close, has there been a single moment that you've had or a piece of feedback or a realisation that changed how you saw Lee and how Lee ultimately exists in the world?

48:03And that could have been your diagnosis. It could have been... Actually, well, the recent one which we said before, and I think I really would reiterate it. I'll give you two, actually. I'll give you the old one that we did and I'll give you a new one. the first one was hearing the the the meditation leader say smiling is not a lightweight practice just for the same again i sat with that comes over time you're like no it's not actually it does need to be practiced right i'm going to choose things to be happy and happy about now and then you work on you know the tools that have to sit behind that are gratitude forgiveness and meta the concept of loving kindness radiating love that was there are things that you can literally do to make yourself happier in choice by doing so the other one was something I've been working on for I say working on it's so simple I've got a sheet of paper I'll do it for you it this is like my 101 guide to making better decisions as a criteria it's like a life guide in life if you can see that it's just a vertical line on a sheet of paper some things that happen to you are bad and some things that happen to you are good right really makes sense all you you don't control that that's out of your control all you have is how you can respond to it and so over here you've got uh let me do it this way is that right no that should be that way always get that one wrong right there we go it's just pluses and minuses it's a quadrant it looks like a window frame right so top top right corner you've got plus plus some good stuff happens you do some good stuff back you contribute you add to society you do something right but then there's the good something something good happens and you do the minus you're cynical you ruin it you ruin it now that could be intentional not intentional it then stresses the need for education and self-betterment it's to try and not ruin the good things that life offers you so avoid the plus minus the other one which is very common bottom left corner is minus minus something bad happens you make it work you call me a this i call you a that you do i it's retaliation it's make it worse don't do that don't make it worse and the other one here is the minus plus that's so so crucial because we often we miss the plus plus we don't add to it but the minus plus is the turnaround it's the making something out of it and actually and this is really interesting i said before because i heard a stat it was the stats i heard recently that you know it's about 80 percent of thoughts are negative of the things that we're worried about only about five percent of them or something even lower actually happen and of the ones that actually happen only a small amount are viewed as profoundly negative afterwards anyway most of them in the end we make our peace with turn it around and turns out to be a life alarm instead of tinnitus whatever that might be right so it's the minus plus so essentially my super basic guide to life is do more of the top two and less of the bottom two try and ruin it less and make and don't make it worse you know try not to ruin it or make it worse try and turn it around and contribute and and it's a so so basic you could can and i will one day maybe try and explain it to a five-year-old you know it shouldn't be in is we we it's not a complicated thing to think through but it's quite useful because you're like okay now to reflect on my behavior did i contribute did i turn it around or did i make it worse or ruin it and it's just that quadrant it's like all right what are the behaviors that help me make it better and the funny thing is it doesn't matter if you get the minus or the plus from life your best response is the plus right i either turn it around or contribute so if your best response is the plus anyway personal responsibility is the thing that makes you choose to do that so to choose to do the plus choose to contribute and then life delivers you back things call it karma manifestation whatever you want it's pretty bloody simple love that it's great um i might try and uh mark that up as a visual to go along with the podcast um yeah um do you won't take you long well i i could see little little few pluses and minuses that's all it is um what do you wish workplaces uh understood about autism and the uh how they could change that overnight um or i i guess so it's understanding what workplaces i wouldn't just say autism i would say that neurodivergence will it's a diversity conversation um oh i can only speak from our workplace because when i've worked in other places it wasn't that they were silent in fact they very much weren't signed on it when it worked for an american company they were super inclusive in every way they this company was they tried to be as inclusive they could be really on purpose now of course they fell down for lots they did fall down for lots of different reasons but they really sort of tried on it um i think it's not a it's probably not a tell but an ask right it probably isn't what i think or we think or managers should think should be imposed people don't like having change done to them people like driving change so it's probably the one across workplaces including mine i'm saying this to myself as much as anything else is listen better mic drop run that was the pause um i i i agree i think there is um sometimes it can be quite performative um what you see out there and i think sometimes we don't necessarily create the time to listen.

53:18We're all rushing to... It's all performative, but it's not only performative. Because if someone's doing that good stuff anyway, they want to display it because it has value in displaying it. So it becomes consciously... It's impossible to not be performative because you're knowing how it's going to be released as well. It doesn't mean you don't do it. It just means that there's an acknowledgement. I say this because it's quite interesting graphically. I have a friend, a recent friend, who collects old communist posters. And one of the collections he's got is phenomenal is performative anti-racism everyone from across the old communist world from vietnam to countries countries countries countries all in the same poster everyone aligned and looking up at the flag basically the banner of communism is it is that that that states are performative on that basis companies i think i think my point is though and part of the reason why i started the podcast was that often i see lots of initiatives yeah and action as to how business businesses can support and i think that's amazing right i think that's brilliant and it's great to see people doing that what i don't see is enough people being open and willing to share their own experience their own lived experience and that's fine because it's not for everyone are there forums for it usually this is my point there aren't the forums because there isn't the time for the forums because everyone is rushing around yeah and so for me the one thing that i found with the podcast is not only have i given people the opportunity to share their stuff but the messages and the risk and the support and um the identification people have got by sending me back wow like that was amazing to here and and i think that is what is missing is that we need to again as you say not create a pity party yeah but be able to give and create environments and conditions where people aren't just saying oh here's the policy yeah we will support you in any way actually no we're going to run a really impactful session and again what i mean is not an impactful session that gets put and two weeks before it's a zoom ain't to me i think that that's the aspect that's lost is you want to get people in in a room together you need to make it an appointment to view you need to plan it in advance you know you need to protect people's time to be able to go and experience that because they're going to get a real benefit and so that's what i mean by yeah moving beyond performative um which i which i think people are doing more of yeah yeah yeah i think performative or not like if people are doing the actions and people are benefiting as a result that's a good Yes, I agree.

56:01I agree. I think having people like you, others on the podcast to share their experience, it's just another way really, you know, for me to hold space for others, listen and hopefully give people that, I guess that sense of relief, but also identification that I'm not alone. Actually, I know how people think. I know how people feel. And that's hugely powerful. this was one of the barriers or like the strange parts about autism is actually the being alone stuff you kind of like and it's also like they say it's lonely at the top right you you're often not prepared for because you've got to make decisions and hold uncomfortable potential situations and outcomes and defend protect the team a lot for that and then you're friends with your team but you're also in a management position and then there's also responsibilities and then there might also be an HR challenge one day, right?

56:52So there is a dynamic in that relationship that is shaped by that position as well and it's not always a welcome position to sit in. One of the things with a rich inner world of autism is you're almost like, I can be so entertained and amused by the things that distract me that it offers an amount of protection. The biggest killer in the US, I think it was bigger than smoking at one point, it was like, I'm going to get the stat wrong, but loneliness. loneliness is a massive killer of people you know people not having people so yeah and to your point if the space can be held for people to open up and develop real friendship that's a wonderful thing so what permission would you give to people uh to think feel say or do that might have been diagnosed with a neurodivergent condition because there are many um but we like to leave people with I think the permission slip is a wonderful principle.

57:47A permission slip. I think it's a really good principle. I saw someone do it brilliantly at an event where there were a lot of people just getting into the industry and some senior folks there. They gave the permission slip to go and meet someone. You have a permission slip. They said on stage, I give every one of you who's in this position doing this thing five licenses to meet and speak with other people. And then that was so good. so I think if there's a permission slip it should be something that's valuable or functioning ultimately people will recognize that I'm not giving them a slip at all they're giving it to themselves and in which case again should listen and ask so what this is not deflecting the question but what is the best permission slip or most valuable for someone to give themselves might not be the one that I would suggest but I guess if if because of who the audience is of this podcast it's probably a position a permission slip to know that if you talk about a neurodivergence that you have or something you're going through you probably won't be judged or judged badly or ill for it and someone may be able to help you and if you're in a position where you need help and you're not asking for help certainly not going to get anything someone who waits for crispy duck to fly into their mouth will be hungry for a very long time so you probably should talk about it and the question you ask yourself is what's the worst that happens?

59:06Probably not that much. Right? Like, oh no, I don't, I can't help you. Cool. Oh, that wasn't that bad. Again, fear is an inch deep but a mile wide. So it's probably a, most of the, I've been saying this a lot lately, most of the things that we want are on the other side of a difficult conversation. It's not that difficult once you start the conversation. So you may as well get that. Wow. What an ending. we have been through everything um uh lee honestly it's a pleasure to have you on thanks uh i think for me sometimes it's you know i always i guess for me if it helps one yeah then job done yeah yeah i'm i'm all about making sure that we can give i guess a platform for people to share their own experience um but also look you're already packing up your papers i'm finished i'm doing i I was going to do the newsreader.

1:00:02I mean, that is, I haven't even finished yet. But I was going to say, you never get, now I've been doing social media for about a year, like personal social media, broadcasting stuff from a gallery, at the Boff, get into by shameless plug, separate to the at Global Street Art, shameless plug number two. Now I've been doing that, like what you notice in the comments is, I've been really lucky, I've been really, really lucky, really nice fan base, like, you know, contributors, people commenting, but there's always the negative ones as well right they come up quite a bit too if it has been useful or valuable to someone or someone thought something i or you said in this episode was useful please do drop it in the comments or or pop an email or something but it would be really nice to know what of it was of value yeah because they say the secret in life is do more of what works so if something is valuable for someone and we hear that back it does let me know you know that there's an opportunity to talk more about well things that we often we often find that the social clips you know do really well and that's actually if people don't listen to the whole episode of which a lot of people do you know they can just take something in the snippet of the social episode yeah um not sure which one that will be because there could be many from this one um but i think honestly it's it's a privilege to have you on it's great to have leaders come on and talk about their own lived experience um if you don't know global street art they're an incredible business um they do some brilliant work and if you haven't been to a night at the gallery reach out to Lee he hosts these and it's fascinating and more importantly I think as Lee said you know follow global street art but also Lee uh for his musings um but also some of the more of this but colorful uh and I am a great kisser uh I think so uh yeah punchline ended thank you sir um good to see you and uh can't wait for people to hear this episode cheers Cheers.

1:01:58Oh, man. That was great fun. Yeah. I really enjoyed it. Good, good, good.

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