[00:00:00] Welcome back, friends, to our podcast, Unlocking Your World of Creativity. And for so many of us creative types, sometimes looking where others don't, developing our own style, our own perspective of creative thinking, instead of fitting in to what everybody else thinks the creativity ought to be from us is a real challenge.

So we're going to delve into that today with our guest, Ozan Varol. Ozan, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having

me here, Mark. And Ozan exemplifies this idea of a creative journey. He's the author of a terrific new book called Awaken Your Genius. And I love the subtitle, Ozan, Escape Conformity to Ignite Creativity and Become Extraordinary.

What is it about this conformity that says We want to fit into a box and maybe that's to please people or to be a best seller. We think we need to sound like everybody else, but how do we get out of this [00:01:00] conformity box?

Yeah, great question. Let me answer that with a with a story that I tell in Awaken Your Genius.

And the story is about Johnny Cash. In 1954, he walks into the audition room at Sun Records. Now, at the time, he's a nobody. He is selling appliances door to door. He's broke, his marriage is in ruins and he plays gospel songs at night with two of his friends, but that's the extent of his music career.

So he walks into this audition room and and for his audition, he picks a gospel song because that's what he knows best. And what's more gospel is all the rage in 1954. Everyone else was. Singing it. So his initial tendency is to conform. So he starts singing this slow, dreary gospel song and the record label owner, Sam Phillips pretends to be interested for about 30 seconds before interrupting cash.

And he turns to cash and he says. We already heard that song just like that a hundred times, just like how you sang it. And he looks at him and he says, sing something different. [00:02:00] Sing something real, sing something you felt because that's the kind of song that people want to hear. That's the kind of song that truly saves people.

And that rants jolts cash out of his conformist. Let me sing you some good old gospel attitude. He collects himself, he starts strumming his guitar, and he starts playing a song called the Folsom Prison Blues that he had written when he was in the Air Force. And in that moment, he stops trying to become a gospel singer, and he becomes Johnny Cash.

And he walks out of that audition room with a contract all because he resists the tendency to conform and he embraces what makes him different. What makes him unique. So to tie that back to your question about conformity. I think. Most of us wouldn't dare to do what Cash did in that audition room.

Because we assume following the herd makes us safe, right? We'd rather fail collectively. We'd rather fail singing the same gospel song that everyone else is singing than risk failing individually. But when we operate with that attitude, life [00:03:00] becomes a race to the center. And the center is too crowded with other gospel singers, singing the same type of gospel song.

And so really, the key in this really noisy The world that we live in is to embrace the false and prison blues that you have inside of you instead of caving into this tendency to conform to look around you and to copy and paste what other people are doing. Because when you do that, you turn into plain vanilla ice cream and plain vanilla ice cream is not remarkable.

Yes.

And these preconceived notions. I'm sure Johnny Cash said, Hey, this is what made me. This is what got me even to the standing in this room. And you tell this story and I also think about Bob Dylan steps out on a stage playing, acoustic folk rock and then all of a sudden the second half of the show brings out the electric guitars and they blew him off the stage.

But we get tied to what served us already. How do we turn away from that though? It's Hey, I've been successful doing this boy. It is a [00:04:00] step out onto the plank sometimes.

Yeah, for sure. It can be really hard and actually struggle with that very problem. You're just describing in writing.

Awaken your genius. Because my previous book called Think Like a Rocker Scientist that came out in 2020. It did really well. It's been translated to now 25 languages. And when I started writing Awaken Your Genius, My initial tendency was to conform to what I did in the past. And but by the way, so far we've been talking about conforming to what other people are doing.

There's a different type of conformity, which is conforming to your past success, conforming to your old habits, conforming to your old ways of existing. And that was my initial tendency was to say, look, I'm going to take what made think like a rocket scientist successful. I'm going to copy and paste. I'm going to copy and paste the same structure, the same formula, the same 3 parts, the same, 9 chapters, and then.

put it into this different idea and it'll be, just copy and paste and same level of success. And for the first time in my life, I got writer's block. The [00:05:00] words just stopped flowing. I was trying to make this thing fit into a structure where it didn't belong. And this is a different book, a completely different idea.

And I struggled with it for about a month. Until I said, all right, I'm going to let it go. I'm going to let go of my previous success. I'm going to let go of the structure I had in mind for this book. And instead I'm going to treating it like a puzzle board. I'm going to build the initial puzzle pieces first, not knowing exactly where they're going to lead me.

But I'm going to just lean into what's coming up organically, and I'm going to connect these puzzle pieces. And then the idea for the book actually emerged over time, which was the exact opposite of how I had written my last book, which was like, the idea was set from day one, I had the title, I had everything ready to go, and then the pieces fell into place from there. Here, it was more bottom up. But if I had forced myself to conform to what I had done in the past, number one, this book wouldn't have been as [00:06:00] good and as creative as it was. And I think number two, people would have looked at it and say, Hey, like this is just more of the same.

This is just version 2. 0 of what he had written before. And I think, there's a quote from somebody whose name I'm forgetting right now, but she says she was a famous singer. She says, they're going to crucify you for changing. They're going to crucify you for staying the same. I'd rather get crucified for changing, for actually growing, for expanding, for stepping into who I am today, as opposed to try to fulfill some obligations to what I used to be in the past.

And what is it, Ozan, that attracts you or compels you to explore this idea of creativity? These principles and ideas that you present in the book. Why is this kind of thinking important for you to pursue?

I think creativity is one of, one of essential human qualities. I hear people come to me [00:07:00] and say, I'm not a creative person.

And I don't buy that. I think everyone is creative. The world isn't divided into creative and non creative people. The world is divided into people who use their creative talents and those who don't. I think everyone is born creative. Everyone is born curious and creativity allows us to tap into. this unique wisdom, this unique genius that exists inside of us.

And I, I picked the term, the word genius and the title of Awakening Your Genius for a very specific reason, because genius is often thought to mean, the most talented or the most intelligent, but actually that's not how I use the word and the title. The word harkens back to this quote from Thelonious Monk.

He says, a genius is the one most like himself. And genius in the Latin origin of the word actually refers to the spirits present at birth in each and every person. So each of us is like Aladdin and our genie or our genius is tapped inside of us waiting to be awakened. [00:08:00] And I think creativity is the tool with which we use to unleash that and awaken that genius.

And so I think the study of creativity for me is really interesting for that reason.

I love that genie in there. In the bottle. Yeah, I'll be using that visual imagery for myself. Ozan, I think I wanted to turn the page a little bit and think about your personal creative journey born in Istanbul, Turkey.

You didn't have any native English speakers in your family, but came to Cornell at age 17 to study science, worked your way into working on a couple of the Mars. Rover expedition projects. This really set in motion a real creative journey that didn't follow a linear path. Let's stay on planetary science.

Let's stay on, rocket science as your first book alludes to but where were those foundational creative principles set for you? What were really those things that [00:09:00] set in motion your creative journey? I

think at an early age, I spent a lot of time imagining I was really into astronomy.

Carl Sagan was my childhood hero. I would watch the original Cosmos series narrated by Sagan over and over again. I didn't speak any English, so I had no idea what he was saying, but I listened anyway. Yeah, it sounded great and it looked great. And I love sci fi books and so I, I get lost in the worlds of, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C.

Clark and Isaac Asimov. And I think being predisposed to in many ways, and I think exercising this muscle of not just Observing what is, but also envisioning what could be that to me was essential to the launch of my creative journey. And in some ways, it was forced in the sense that I love Turkey.

I love Turkish [00:10:00] people. It's my home country, but it is a very conformist culture. And in many ways, I didn't belong in the education system. Yeah. And just to give you an example of the type of conformity that existed, when we start a school, primary school, every student was assigned a number, and our principal would call us by that number instead of our first name.

We'd be called 38 instead of Ozan. A very. Very on the nose way of stripping down your individual qualities. What makes your unique human being and replacing you with a number. And so that was very antithetical to the way that I was wired. And so that meant I just went in and I would spend a lot of time imagining and envisioning what could be as opposed to paying attention to what it is, because I think observation ends up fueling repetition and imagination is what fuels innovation.

And so from an early age, I would just, dream of working on a space mission someday and becoming an astronaut someday. [00:11:00] And those dreams essentially, and eventually led me to, learn English as a second language, teach myself computer programming, research how to get into colleges in the United States.

States. And as you mentioned, Mark, I ended up getting into Cornell to study astrophysics and came here when I was 17 with two suitcases and nothing else to my name and left my family behind in Turkey and then ended up working on the Mars Exploration Robust Project. But at any stage of the journey, I'm always fueled by this idea of what could be.

And I certainly pay attention to what is, but I don't Obsess about it. And and I remind myself continuously that there is so much power in imagining what could be. Yes.

And I often underscore the world of creativity in my podcast title. To give us a real global view I wondered if your experience and those you've talked to and those in your circle find that is also a way to get out of our own sort of boundaries [00:12:00] to literally look outside our boundaries.

What does that worldview give you in terms of creativity and really awakening a genius?

Yeah, and I'll I think there are two facets that I'd love to talk about when it comes to the world of creativity. One is the geographic aspect and the importance of stepping outside this world that we're living in the country we're living in the city we're living in.

And then because that plays an important role in my creative journey. And then the second is stepping outside of the discipline that we're normally operating in. So the first one, which is for me, one aspect of stepping outside the world of the world that I'm living in is travel and particularly foreign travel foreign travel for me has a way of.

Totally just turning my world topsy turvy, right? You're like surrounded by the echoes of a language you don't understand. Everything is new. You become a young fool again. And I think those conditions are that environment is really conducive to making some fundamental [00:13:00] changes in your life. And studies show that smokers find it easier to quit when they're traveling, because, the new city that they're in doesn't have the same smoking associations as their home.

And so stepping outside the city we're living in, the country we're living in, and exposing ourselves to different languages, different ways of being in the world, where the majority becomes a minority, everything changes is I think so conducive to shedding old skin that no longer belongs to us, and then igniting that creativity.

Within and in a smaller scale, I actually find it really helpful to even step outside the room that I normally write and bring my laptop to a different room in the house or go to a cafe somewhere. Cause I think, most of us if you're like a typical knowledge worker, you're sitting in front of the same computer in the same physical position in the same room day in and day out.

And I think those old habits become tied to that environment that you're operating in. But if you step outside that environment. It becomes easier [00:14:00] to dislodge some of those blocks and ignite, ignite new ideas from within. So that's the geographic aspect. And I think there's a different aspect to stepping outside our world or my world, which is switching disciplines.

So exposing yourself to ideas from disciplines that nothing about. And my whole life has been a study of this. I started out in Astrophysics and working on the Mars Exploration Rovers project, and then I did a 180, went to law school, became a lawyer, did that for three years, switched it again, and went into academia, became a law professor, got tenure in 2016 and tenured professors don't quit their jobs because you've got life that life security, right?

You've got a guaranteed paycheck for life. It's a safety net and a really strong one at that. And yet I decided to leave in 2021 was my last semester of teaching. Because so much of what I [00:15:00] used to love in the past the safety net had actually become a straitjacket in many ways and had begun to confine me.

And so I had to step outside of that world to be able to step into who I was becoming. But I think throughout that journey, I've benefited so much from taking ideas from these seemingly unrelated fields rocket science and law and creativity and innovation and all of these seemingly disparate concepts, and then connecting the dots between them and thinking through how ideas from.

Rocket science, for example, could apply in other areas. And that actually that was like the question that led to me writing. Think like a rocket scientist. And so there's so much value in doing that in stepping outside the discipline that we're in and. And taking a look at other fields.

Yes.

But Ozan, if I go to another city that I don't know, I'm guaranteed to be lost, uncomfortable among people I don't know and [00:16:00] don't know if I should associate with. Am I in the right part of town? Am I eating the right food? Oh my goodness. Look at the potholes and obstacles that I would face. Now draw that analogy to changing disciplines.

How many times in law school did you step out, of your astrophysicist role and say, I am completely lost right here. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And that's how life works, right? All the things that you described of getting lost in a new city, being really uncomfortable. That's how you learn and grow.

And what a great training ground for getting used to stepping outside of the status quo and stepping out of what made you comfortable in the past. And and anytime you change disciplines as I've done in the past, it's liberating in one sense, because you starting over and you could be whoever you want to be, but it's also really humbling because I, with my last transition, I was a successful law professor.

And I had professor in front of my name and that opened [00:17:00] many doors for me and I had built a name for myself and my, field of comparative constitutional law and, you jump off this cliff and all of that is gone. It's completely gone. You're a beginner again, and it's really humbling in many ways.

You don't have that same credibility that you used to have in this field because now you're new. But in that newness is also a profound sense of liberation and freedom because now you can just leave behind your past and the baggage that may have been holding you back and step into what's coming up for you now.

And I think there is so much room for creative growth in those conditions.

Such good insight. As we're talking about your book, Awaken Your Genius, I wondered if you'd be willing as an author now to share a passage of the book. Let's get a sense of your style and tone and voice.

Sure. I'm going to read a section from the introduction.[00:18:00]

Inside you is a reservoir of untapped wisdom. You are made up of every experience you've had, every story you've heard, every person you've been, every book you've read, every mistake you've made, every piece of your beautifully messy human existence. Everything that makes you. A huge treasure waiting to be explored.

But all that wisdom is concealed under the masks you wear, the roles you play, and the decades of social conditioning that have taught you to think like your teachers, to think like your parents, to think like your tribe, to think like influencers and thought leaders, to think like anyone but yourself. As a result, we become strangers to ourselves.

Many of us go from birth to death without knowing what we really think and who we really are. Here's the thing. No one can compete with you at being you. You are the first and the last time that you'll ever happen. If your thinking is an extension of you, if [00:19:00] what you're building is a product of your own genius, You'll be in a league of your own, but if you suppress yourself, if you don't claim the wisdom within, no one else can.

That wisdom will be lost both to you and to the world. Think of humans as individual puzzle pieces that combine to build a beautiful collective. Each piece is important. Each piece is idiosyncratic. The puzzle cannot be completed with a billion corner pieces all of the same shape and color. What makes each piece different is also what makes it valuable to the collective.

If you copy or conform to the other pieces, the world loses its full shape and color.

Very nice. Thanks for sharing that. Folks, we've been talking with Ozan Baral. He's the author of Awaken Your Genius, Escape Conformity, Ignite Your Creativity, and Become Extraordinary. Lisanne, I'm curious from a craftsmanship, and this comes up a lot when we talk with writers, whether that kind of introduction,[00:20:00] was your going in.

It was your brief. You said, this is what I'm going to build the whole book on. Or did you write it almost as a summary after the fact when you said, here's I've laid out this book and now I need an introduction. How do I set this story up? I was just curious which it worked out

for you. That was the latter for sure.

The introduction was, and it always is the last thing I write. I think, and part of the reason is, I got into this a little bit with the writing of this book. It really was from the from the ground up. I had no idea where I was going to end up when I started writing it. And so it... Writing the introduction wouldn't have worked or even if I had written it, I would have tossed it and had to start over from scratch because the work, the book just ended up being different from what I expected.

Yeah, so the introduction came last and I think part of the creative process for me too, is I grow and learn so much with each book I write. And so if the book took me about eight months to write, I was a different person. At the end of that eight [00:21:00] month period, then I was at the beginning of it.

And so if I had written the introduction at the beginning of that journey, it wouldn't have been faithful to where I actually ended up. And so the introduction is always the last thing I write because then I have an, an overview of how, where things ended up and what I really, how I want to tie the book together to describe what this puzzle piece or puzzle looks like having built the individual pieces first.

And I always like to ask my guests, what's next and of course, I've got the next movie. I've got the next album. I've got the next book. And I know you've got more books than you, but what if Ozan, you were to flip again and completely reband, you've already been the rocket scientist and a lawyer and a lecturer, but where else could Ozan go?

What's been in the back of

your mind? So many possibilities and I think right now I'm really enjoying being in the void and I've got a [00:22:00] million ideas for my next book and I think a previous version of me would have just jumped into the next idea which is what I did with Awaken Your Genius the week after Think Like a Rocket Scientist came out.

I started writing the proposal for what became Awaken Your Genius, and I'm trying very hard not to do that. And I'm stepping into the void and giving myself time and space for ideas to come, and I'm collecting lots of ideas, and I'm jotting them down, but I'm not... Jumping into the next thing right away.

And that's actually been a really healthy process for me because I've spent my whole life moving from one thing to the next one field to the next. And it's been this thrilling ride, but it also at times left me exhausted and left me making some bad decisions too, because I would jump into the next thing too quickly.

So I'm giving myself time, like. When you look at nature has seasons. I think human beings work the same way too. And right now I'm in a season of dormancy. I'm just collecting resources and [00:23:00] nutrients and water and everything else I will need to produce fruit when the next, when the right season comes.

But that's not the right season right now.

We're here. Yes, exactly. Azan, maybe you could leave us with an idea. There are creative people listening to this. And again, they maybe have their genie still in the bottle or in the boundaries, in the box. Give us a step, just even a micro step that we could all take today to escape this conformity and really start on a new creative path to really unleashing

the work.

I think the easiest thing that you can do a micro step, as you put it, Mark, would be to put yourself on airplane mode from time to time. And that's what I call it. And in a way, can your genius putting yourself on airplane mode? We put our smartphones in airplane mode, but. We don't put ourselves on airplane mode.

Most of us are moving from, operating in the way that I just described moving from one project to the next, one email to [00:24:00] the next, one notification to the next one meeting to the next, there is no room for reflecting, no room for thinking, no room for deliberation, no room for imagining what could be as opposed to continuously observing.

And so if you can make time in your life to imagine what could be to give yourself time and space to think, you'll be amazed at how much your creativity will grow in the process. And if you ask most people, where do your best ideas come? Most people will say the shower. And if you think about it, it's, it makes so much sense.

It's one of those few moments in your day where you're just there by yourself with your thoughts, no distractions, no notifications, screaming their a hundred decibel sirens for attention. You're just letting your mind drift. And so there's so much value in doing that. And for me, this takes a number of different forms.

I'll, when I wake up in the morning, I'll usually just lie in bed and close my eyes and [00:25:00] daydream and let my mind drift. I really enjoy walking. Research shows that walking boosts creativity. There's so many examples of scientists literally walking themselves into the right answer. They'll be stuck on a problem.

They'll move away from the problem. They'll go on a walk and the answer will arrive as if by magic. No audio book, no podcasts. This is a great podcast, but don't listen to a podcast when you're putting yourself in airplane mode. It should just be. You and your thoughts and just imagine replicating those shower like conditions throughout the day and putting yourself in an airplane mode.

It's really amazing how much that micro step that small steps goes to provide a giant leap in, in creativity. Fantastic.

And then obviously the idea is then we'll become extraordinary. Exactly. And even breaking that word down, I often say it's extra. Ordinary. It seems like an everyday thing. Airplane mode, take a walk.

Wow. But look at the [00:26:00] results that could come,

right? Exactly. Simple but effective. Yeah. Thanks

for sharing that. And thanks for coming on the show. I've really appreciated our conversation and you sharing your experiences.

My pleasure, Mark. Thanks so much for having me on. And those of you who are listening I'm not active on social media.

So if you'd like to keep in touch with me, the best way to do that is to join my email list. I've got an email list, an email that goes out every Thursday to now over 45, 000 people. And it shares one big idea that you can read in 3 minutes or less. People call it the one email. I actually look forward to every week and you can.

You can join that by heading over to my website, which is ozanvarol. com. That's O Z A N, V as in Victor, A R O L. com. Or you can, if you're in the United States, text my first name, Ozan, to 55444. Fantastic.

And see, even these modems and mediums are creative. So text the name. Fantastic.[00:27:00] My guest has been Ozan Baral.

He's the author of Awaken Your Genius, and he's given us lots of insights and specific tips. On how to awaken that genius that we can all use. So it's almost worth rewinding the episode and then get a pen and paper or your note taking device out and say, there's an idea, there's an idea, and there's an idea.

And then let's go on airplane mode. Good advice. So listeners come back again next time. We're going to continue our around the world journeys to talk to creative practitioners and creativity experts about how we can get inspired, how we can organize our ideas and most of all, gain the confidence and the connections to launch our work out into the world.

And that's what it's all about. So until next time, I'm Mark Stinson and we're unlocking your world of creativity. Bye for now.