How To Think Like Leonardo da Vinci - Michael Gelb

Why would anyone want to think like Leonardo da Vinci? Why would anybody not want to think like Leonardo da Vinci? If you even dreamed that it was possible, most people are never really made aware of the phenomenal unlimited potential with which we are all born—the incredible brains that we're gifted with. But they didn't come with a manual.

So, you know, just like baby ducks learn to walk by imitating their mothers, we learn how to think and how to be by the people we get to imitate. Usually, that's a default setting: your mom and dad, the people around you when you grow up, your teachers. But what if you called on history's greatest genius to be your personal mentor in utilizing those amazing capabilities?

What was Da Vinci like as a person? What was his demeanor? He was charming, he was funny, he was elegant. He liked to dress really well; he wore the finest clothes that he could afford, the finest fabrics. He was a musician. He had a gift for making people feel comfortable, for connecting with others, which is part of how he was able to get high-level patrons throughout his career. He charmed them, and they thought, "Well, we kind of like this guy. Let's keep him around and see what he can do." And then he winds up painting the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, among a few other things.

So, he was a canny operator.

Yeah, I mean, you had to be to get by at that time. You needed patronage; you needed a sponsor. Just like I noticed you always have these great sponsors on your show, and I want to buy all those products every time I watch you. Like, "Yeah, I need that backpack."

They're my patrons.

Yeah, exactly. You need a backpack!

Shout out!

How much do you know? I love Italy. I've spent a lot of time in Florence and Rome. I recently came back from Venice. You know, the period of time with Michelangelo and Da Vinci was politically very interesting in Italy. How much did the political landscape and the cultural landscape of Italy at the time shape who he was, his opportunities, the way he saw the world, and the places that he placed his efforts?

Sure! Well, he had to move because of political turmoil. His original tenure in Florence came to an end when he saw that he might be better off under the patronage of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan.

So, you probably read the most famous employment application letter of all time. Can you tell people about that?

Well, you gotta love it! It starts with "Most illustrious Lord," and then he basically says, "Having seen what other people can do, I gotta tell you, I can do way better." Then he goes on to say, "I can build you bridges. I can take care of everything in times of war," because the felt need of despots like Sforza was, "Build me some cannons. Help me get underwater to blow up the enemy's fortress."

So, Leonardo goes on and on about how he can help with all this, and then he says, "Oh, by the way, I can do a little painting." And then he says, "Not only that, I'll come to your palace and I'll prove that I can do all of this." And then he says, "All in most gracious humility."

He got the job!

It's that line, "Also, I can paint," that I just adore. You know, this sort of huge, illustrious list of things—war machines, battle plans, technology, engineering—then, "Also, I can paint."

Did he see his artistic endeavors as kind of second string in some regard, or was that just playing to the fact that this guy probably needed war machines and curating to the audience?

You gotta give the customer what they're asking for.

And what he wanted and what he needed. To come back to your earlier question, you know, he wound up in the Vatican for a while. He was under the patronage of Cesare Borgia. He had a second time in Florence under the reconstituted Medici. He then was back in Milan for a while under the patronage of the French, and then he spent the last three years of his life as the philosopher and basically high-level executive coach to François I, the King of France.

So, he had to do what he had to do in order to continue to do what he really wanted to do, which was to understand the mind of God. What Leonardo was passionately curious about was: What is truth? What is beauty? What is goodness? How do they all fit together?

So, for him, art—what we call art—and what we call science were just ways of exploring truth. What is real? What is the nature of things? You know, he drew the very first reasonably accurate drawing of an embryo in the womb because he really wanted to understand the secret of life.

So, the science is he did dissections of more than 30 bodies, which was very hard to do at that time without running water, electric light, refrigeration, and so on and so forth. Yet, the way he drew the things that he was dissecting are so exquisitely beautiful; they are works of art and science.

And that's the fifth principle for thinking like Leonardo: is "Artenza," the integration of art and science. The drive that he has to do the things that he does seems to come from a quite balanced place.

You know, as you go around the Vatican or wherever else, there's sort of two: it's Michelangelo and Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Da Vinci. That's what the tour guides are telling you about. But it seems, at least unless I'm remembering inaccurately, Michelangelo was very much like a conflicted soul. You know, sort of very pessimistic. He had a dark dog that followed him around. It seems like he maybe basically kind of had permanent depression throughout his entire life—difficult to work with, like rambunctious, disagreeable.

And you can see where I think the drive for that kind of a person seems to be easier to understand in some ways. He's got this sort of fervent need to prove himself for validation, to put his work forward because the external accolades will fill the internal void, hopefully.

Da Vinci's much more difficult for me to work out how he's motivated to work so hard. Does that make sense?

I love that! I love that the contrast between Leonardo and Michelangelo is a wonderful character study of genius, and they both reflect aspects of our own quest to express ourselves and achieve and live our life's purpose. Some of us do it from guilt and shame, like Michelangelo, and some of us do it from love and just passionate, deepest level curiosity.

So, you were in the Vatican, and no doubt you saw the amazing—obviously the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel—but the Judgment of Christ painting on the front wall of the chapel with the amazing, powerful figure of Christ sending some people up to heaven and sending everybody else down below.

Do you know where Michelangelo is in that painting? Because, you know, they always put themselves in these paintings.

If you go back and look at this again, he's hung out—his flayed skin is hung out on a branch, hovering in purgatory, roasting over the fires of hell.

So, that was Michelangelo's painting of his own self-image. Having said that, he did do the David and the Pietà, which are shows of love, right? They're hope; it's upward aiming. It's the greatest that we can be. Amazing!

So, that's just the thing: we can't just reduce them to simple psychological explanations.

Show me the other side then. If that's the light side of Michelangelo, what's the dark side of Da Vinci?

Great, great, great! The dark side of Da Vinci is twofold. One is he's been criticized a lot for not following through and actually finishing things. Now, I've defended him because I feel like he was so interested in just pure perfection. He wasn't competing with Michelangelo or other artists; he was competing with God.

So, part of why he couldn't finish things is he couldn't quite get everything as perfect as nature, which is what he wanted to do. I also think that he knew he was a genius, and he ultimately didn't really care whether the monks got their altarpiece or not. He thought he was on to something more profound.

I'd say the other dark side is that he went through a period towards the end of his life of profound doubt. He writes in the margins of his notebook, "Did I really accomplish anything?" which is kind of amazing when you consider what he actually accomplished.

So, I think the sense of self-doubt, of maybe losing faith, or—I don't think it's not really even a dark side. I don't see it as light or dark, but it's because it creates what he called "chiaroscuro." Chiaroscuro is the contrast of light and dark. There is no light without the dark; there's no dark without the light.

And that's part of what makes Leonardo's artwork so interesting is the way light emerges from the dark. He pioneered that, and that's part of the deeper meaning to me of his work and why we're so drawn to it, so fascinated, and why most people haven't really plumbed the depths and understood the real genius that Leonardo, 550 years ago, was sharing for all of humanity.

What do you wish more people realized that Da Vinci had done? You know, people understand lots of the work, the well-known stuff. What are the early records or like the underground hits that should have had more plays on Spotify?

Well, yeah, he did write "Il Nomo," "The Sun Does Not Move," many years before Copernicus created the heliocentric model. Yeah, it's pretty wild!

And having said that, part of my mission, part of why I wrote "How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci," he was one of my childhood heroes. My grandmother's an Italian painter, and she told me about him. When I was a kid, you know, Superman was my other hero, but I grew up and found out, "Oh, he was only a comic book character." But Leonardo was real.

Part of why he fascinates us now, part of why he's on a PBS special, part of why there was "The Da Vinci Code," part of why his painting sold a few years ago for $450 million—the most any work of art has ever sold for.

Which piece was it?

It was the "Salvator Mundi."

Okay!

The "Savior of the World." It's an amazing frontal portrait of Christ holding the globe of the world in the palm of his hand. It's exquisite! I actually saw it. It was found; it was authenticated by Professor Martin Kemp, who's probably the go-to academic world expert on Leonardo. Then it was sold at auction for $450 million, and it's disappeared. People are trying to figure out where it is.

But the point is, he's in the news; we're talking about him.

And here's the real answer to your question: here's what I really wish people knew. Because he'll endlessly fascinate us with his art, with his science, with his invention. But what I want people to know is that he left instructions in his notebooks on how you can think more like him, on how you can use your potential.

The simple, sort of naive, childlike question I asked many years ago was, "What's he trying to teach us?" And he's really trying to teach us how we can think more creatively, how we can use all of our power and potentiality. So that's what I really want people to know.

Yeah, so you've spent this time deconstructing, reading an awful lot of his work. How much of his work and notebooks and stuff were retained? Is there more lost than was kept?

Have we got more lost than kept?

More lost. 20,000 at best, scholars estimate about 20,000 written pages.

Wow!

So, I mean, six to seven thousand survived.

Exactly!

So even though a lot is lost, there's still quite a lot to get through.

Well, I read it all way back, you know, when I was doing the research for this from—I really focused in on this from 1994 to when the book came out in 1998. I was absolutely immersed. I literally went to the place he was born; I went to the place he died. I walked in his footsteps. I went to every museum I could. I studied the live notebooks as well as reading the raw translations of the notebooks. I interviewed Leonardo scholars. I contemplated his paintings. I started dreaming about him, and it was from those dreams that the Da Vinci principles emerged.

What was a typical day like for him? Do you know what a normal daily routine was?

Well, there's a lot of speculation about that. I would say it probably differed when he was in different places. But we know he advocates the importance of working with great intensity and then taking a break.

So, wherever he was, whatever he was doing—whether he was in his studio or interacting with patrons—we know that one of the things he teaches us and advocates, which has been borne out by contemporary research into optimizing the psychology of memory and high performance and so on and so forth, is oscillation. Work with great intensity.

Actually, there's a great story. When he was working on the Last Supper, he would be up there on the wall of the refectory of the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, working for hours and hours at a time with total intensity. But then he would just disappear sometimes for a few days.

Well, the prior of the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie would get very upset. He'd say, "Where's this Leonardo guy?" Because he didn't know this was an all-time genius. You know, as far as he's concerned, this is just another contractor. "I got Vito the plumber and, you know, Luigi the carpenter, Leo the painter."

So, he comes back, and the prior gives him a hard time. Leonardo dismisses him. So, the prior complains to the Duke, and the Duke summons Leonardo and asks him to explain himself.

Leonardo says one of the great lines of all time: "Men of genius sometimes work best when they work least."

Because he knows—he understands intuitively, and so many of the great geniuses understand intuitively—something that we can all practice ourselves, which is work with your greatest intensity and then quit while you're ahead. Go for a walk in nature and let it all go. Be open, be receptive, go for a walk, come back, write it in your notebook.

So, in a typical day, I know he worked with great intensity, then went for a walk in nature, wrote in his notebook what he observed or the ideas that came to him. His notes were very messy and had lots of creative doodles.

Yeah, I have so many thoughts about this. First one being, I wonder how rare it is for people to be repaid financially, existentially, for the quality of their thoughts. You know, most people have what are commonly referred to as "sh*t jobs."

Right.

It's, you know, something that maybe they're even like kind of fired up by, but it's not necessarily the most creatively demanding job in the world. Or maybe it is, but it's creatively demanding some of the time, not most of the time.

And that would have been, you know, you're hoeing the fields, you're a serf in, you know, 1250 or something in Europe. Like, it's the same; it's all the same.

So, most people, I think, don't generate their primary source of value from the quality of their thoughts. But the goal I think that most people are trying to get to is to be repaid for the quality of their thoughts.

So, what you have in Da Vinci is somebody who is, I think, optimizing for a position that many people want to get into—not necessarily everybody is into—but certainly if you get to the stage where you're trying to be creative, you're trying to come up with new ideas, you are paid for the quality of your thoughts.

That on-and-off thing is really interesting. And then, contemporarily, when you think about, well, the modern world has kind of robbed us of the ability to be off a lot of the time because even when you're walking, the phone's in your pocket, you're listening to a podcast, the podcast is at two and a half times speed, you have people coming past you—there's so much stimulus, etc., etc.

The opportunity to have a full switch-off is super interesting and lacking, I think. And I think I'm right in saying the ancient Greek word for work was "not at leisure."

So, work was an aberration, and leisure was the set point. Whereas now, people kind of have this—I don't know—work purgatory thing where it's just infused. France just released this new bylaw that said that employers can't contact employees after 5:00 p.m. at night or on weekends in an attempt to kind of create a hard stop around this.

But yeah, just that quality of your thoughts—it's a kind of a specific use case, but one that a lot of people, I think, aspire to and would like to get more of.

And then, on the other side, the sort of mismatch that we have with the modern world compared with maybe what would be better for flourishing.

Amen! Well, my whole career, somehow I've pulled off this ability to just get paid for being playful and creative and having fun and helping corporate people. I figured that out: help the people who have money be more creative, and then you get money.

Teaching people who have money to make money is playing on easy mode. Teaching people who don't have money to not make money is playing on hard mode.

Yeah, well, I try to help people who have money make lots of money to be more creative so that they can help people who don't have money and don't have opportunity have more opportunity and more money. That's my lifelong passion: conscious capitalism.

I co-authored a book called "The Healing Organization" with Raj Sisodia. You must know all this down in Austin; that's the headquarters—John Mackey and so on.

So, I've always realized early on that, just like Leonardo did, that's where the power and the money is. So, if we can get business to think more creatively, more compassionately, raise the consciousness of business leaders, then that's a way to contribute to making a better world.

So, that's—I moved. I lived—I was telling you before we started that I lived in England for seven years. I moved to Washington, D.C., in 1982 with this wildly idealistic notion that I would teach government how to think creatively, and that would help save the world.

Well, I was quickly disabused of that notion, but fortunately, business people were interested. I was engaged early on by some visionary humanistic business leaders, and it was from them I learned about the ins and outs of business, and that's what I still do.

Okay, seven principles to think like Da Vinci. What's the first one?

Well, the first one is one that you embody so beautifully in your show, in your podcast, and I think it's why people like it. It's "Curiosità," genuine curiosity. It's a childlike, focused, passionate desire to know.

And you asked one question, and you know Leonardo would never take "yes" for an answer. What about the next question?

And any of those kids know they'll just keep asking you questions, and you can get to the essence of what anybody knows in four or five questions. Einstein would be like, "Okay, we don't know that after five questions."

So, that's our birthright: our birthright is curiosity. Who are the most imaginative people? Little children! Who's got the most energy? Little kids!

But then, you know, you go to school, they focus on getting the right answer instead of asking powerful questions. You go to college or university; it's way worse. You have to regurgitate back what the professor said. Then you go into the workplace, and you're not necessarily rewarding creative thinking or challenging questions. It's figure out what the boss wants, just like you figured out what the professor wants, feed it back to them, and the media and advertising doesn't help with any of that.

So, having a renaissance, a rebirth of your own curiosity, and this is what I try to guide people to do with all the practices. One of the exercises in the book that has had the most legs over the decades—I still get mail from people around the world—there's an exercise in the book where I have you, in one sitting, write out 100 questions. Don't lift your pen off the paper; write 100 questions. You can choose a theme if you want to; it doesn't really matter.

Because what's going to happen is the first 20 or 30 questions will just be your regular quotidian mind. So, you know, "What's the meaning of life?" blah, blah, blah. But you're not really into it yet. The middle level of questions—30, 40, 50—will be, "Why the hell am I doing this exercise? My wrist hurts! Why does my wrist hurt so much? Why did I pick up that stupid book anyway?"

70, 80, 90, 100—a lot of people do 120, 150—you get into new territory, and you shift into a way to break out of the habitual mind.

Then I have you go back through them and highlight the 10 questions that have the most power, that really draw you in the most. Then think of those questions before you go to sleep. Keep your notebook by your bed because you're going to wake up with insights and ahas that, in many cases, will change your life.

So, there are practices. It's not just, "Yeah, be curious." Okay, cool! There are practices and methodologies and disciplines, and that's one of the most powerful, which is why I'm excited to share it with you.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm so fortunate that I have the opportunity to do that 100 questions a day, three or four times a week for now, you know, six and nearly seven years.

My friends may disagree when we sit down for dinner and they just want to chill out, but whatever!

I had a drive. We went to the Mike Tyson fight. We drove back and forth from the Mike Tyson fight in Dallas—Dallas to Austin. So, three and a half hours is 200 miles, and the fight was frankly sh*t. But the trip back and forth between me and my old housemate Zach was just—it's like my favorite thing to do.

I'm locked in a box, and we went everywhere, every single question that we could ask. We're listening to music. He's an amazing musician. I'm like, "So, why? What's syncopation? Explain syncopation to me and why is this thing?" And blah, blah, blah.

And then he gets to ask, "Dude, I don't know."

I understand that not everyone necessarily has that innate drive, but it kind of blows my mind that that's not what everybody's trying to do all the time because it's just the most fun thing to me.

It's the most fun thing! And the coolest thing is it fires your imagination, doesn't it?

And probably if people can put up with you—like if they can put up with me. I've been doing this even longer than you have—not on a podcast, but asking people questions. It fires the imagination and raises your energy.

So, remember we said little kids have wild imagination and the most energy because they have the strongest curiosity. So, if you want more energy, you want to fire your imagination, at any time in your life, you can have a personal renaissance by empowering the questioning process.

It feels like what curiosity feels like to me. It feels like being pulled, not pushing. So much of life, I think, you're forcing yourself into it. You're finding a wedge; you're pushing yourself into this space. Curiosity is the opposite. It's you sort of posit a vacuum, and the vacuum sucks you forward.

And I really like that! I really, I very much do.

You've got the 100 questions. I like that. Is there anything else tactically to consistently sort of keep this tick over across time?

People can't do the 100 questions every day. Journalistic questions: who, what, why, where, when, and how. Just there—there's a handy toolkit, very simple. Ask a question: "Well, who's involved in this particular project and issue? How did it happen? Where did it take place? When did it start? When will it be brought to completion? And why is it happening?"

That'll keep you busy on almost any issue for as long as you can stay up!

All right, cool! That's the first one.

Second, the second one: "Dimostrazione." It's a word that Leonardo actually used in his notebooks, and he was saying, "Demonstrate things through your own experience." Don't just accept something because a person in authority says it or because it's written in a book.

So, it fits with—you can see how naturally it is organically from curiosity.

Then, okay, think it through really critically. So, this is a yin-yang harmony. We're already being asked to be wildly open, really playful, childlike, innocent in your questioning. Then be really skeptical and really tough and really critical as you drive forward with the responses to those questions.

So, that usually has people who are naive and open and playful or people who are just very critical, even cynical. And, you know, to be a cynic is to be a brokenhearted idealist.

I try to take—I've had lots of cynics in my class over the years, as you can imagine, working with construction managers and engineers and finance people and even lawyers.

So, I try to get the cynics to become skeptics and the skeptics to become enthusiasts. And then the super enthusiasts, I get them to be more skeptical.

Yes!

Yeah, as with most things, man, it's the golden mean.

And, you know, I really think there's something to sort of playing with the extremes as opposed to finding a balance in the middle.

And this is just where I'm at at the moment. I think for a long time I tried to, you know, like, "I'm going to stay in shape mostly, but a little bit of the time I'm going to let it off." I'm going to, you know, be skeptical quite a bit and try to be more disagreeable, but I'm also going to have the open, warm-hearted thing going on.

And that's, I guess, kind of optimal for relational stuff. You don't want to be bipolar in all of the things that you do.

But when it comes to more strategic or structural stuff—how you build your life together—I think it's much easier to just go all in in one direction and then periodize what you do.

So, to move from the open-hearted curiosity thing to, "I'm going to scrutinize incredibly heavily the stuff that I've learned," and then I go back. Because trying to do both at the same time is trying to creatively write while you proofread. You can't do them at the same time.

It's an oscillation; it is! It's a rhythmic pulsation. It's like breathing. You inhale, you exhale. It's day and night.

But it's understanding the harmony of those modes. Just like you inhale and you get the fullness of that in-breath, and then there's that exquisite moment—it's the solstice of your breath. It just becomes the exhale.

Just like we're coming up to December 21st.

And I love that! I just love that exquisite moment. It's like it's the greatest potentiality of the hottest day of summer—the top of the roller coaster.

It's the top of the roller coaster, and then when you're at the bottom, and that's called life.

So, recognizing that—that's why in the yin and yang symbol there's that little bit of the light in the dark bit and a little bit of the dark in the light bit.

I was reading "Seven Eves," this great book by Neal Stephenson, and in it, they have to try and repurpose the International Space Station to become a colony for all of human civilization in like two years.

And then they get up there, but you end up learning—Neal Stephenson's a beast—you end up learning a ton about orbital dynamics when you're up there.

Yeah!

And it's really cool. And when you think—just trying to intersect two things flat, like a car hitting another car, quite a lot of stuff has to happen in order for that collision to occur.

But that's only on two dimensions. When you then not only put it into three dimensions but put those three dimensions moving around a spherical object, it is so interesting.

So, they're talking about, again, the orbital dynamics, and they use the terms "zenith" and "apogee" to—and it makes me think about the exact same but now in another dimension.

I'm with you, man! That's cool!

What would you say to the recovering cynics who want to kind of let go of some of their worldly scrutiny and sort of dark day thinking?

How do you want to feel?

It's a really important question when people are in their heads and have adopted positions and preset lenses through which—how's it working for you? What's it protecting you from? What's the benefit of it?

If it's working for you, knock yourself out! But if it's leading you to feel less than buoyant, less than joyous, less than grateful, and you might possibly even consider that life could be more buoyant, graceful, and joyous, then let's experiment with other ways of looking at things and just see, first of all, how they work in terms of practical real problem-solving, but also in terms of what they do to your sense of yourself and your basic feeling of what it is to be here.

I love the idea of "how's that working for you?" It's such a ruthless question.

Naval has one that's similar where he says, "If you're so smart, why aren't you happy?"

And it's crazy when you think—you know, I have a bugbear with cynicism, not only because I find it in myself, but because it's everywhere on the internet. A lot of all of my work goes out on the internet, and it makes me feel disheartened because I love what I do, and I think that most other people that are sort of normal are into learning and developing and doing stuff.

So then when I see that outliers—which tends to be a lot of sort of more sh*t-posty comment sections—thankfully not usually on this channel, but it's still really—it's just not cool.

And it's crazy how tightly people will cling to a life that they ardently don't like. It's like, "I'm the flagbearer for a life that I'm saying is sh*t, but for some reason, I'm also defending it."

I'm defending it at the same time! It blows my mind!

Well, you just— I mean, I really meant it when I said they're often brokenhearted idealists. It's armoring—it's armoring against feeling your feelings, feeling how utterly vulnerable we all are, how this is a temporal deal.

But you said the word "disheartened," and one of the wonderful things about these kinds of conversations—and I think why people tune in—why do people want this? Because it's reheartening. People want something that buoys their heart and their hope.

And that's most needed if you're in the darkest time in your life. If you're actually struggling or suffering, it's easy to talk about how wonderful things are and how creative you can be when everything's going your way.

But all of this counts. Leonardo himself said, "You can navigate, fix your course to a star, and you can navigate through any storm."

What's that mean? It means that if you have a higher purpose, if you have a raison d'être, then those principles—that love of truth, beauty, and goodness, that commitment—will be your North Star, will help navigate in times of difficulty.

This is the Viktor Frankl thing: "Well, strong enough, why will bear anyhow?" I happened to have read him when I was 14 years ago, which is a really long time, and that's part of what set the stage for my whole life and everything I've done since then.

Yeah, super interesting. And it's like, you know, the time that I've spent with neuroscience people like Huberman or whatever—Sam Harris talking about how almost everything is positive destination, move toward the destination, track the distance between you and the destination, get positive reinforcement, move the destination again.

It's this sort of—like how a cartoon snail moves, where it goes like this, then goes flat, goes like this, and then it goes flat.

It feels like that. And I think we can get disheartened by the adaptation.

"Oh, how awful! The thing that I previously only wished that I could have had the opportunity to say yes to is now something that I take for granted."

We sort of give ourselves—we whip ourselves because we say, "Well, I should be more grateful. You wanted this, and you got it, and now you've f***ing forgotten that you've even had it!"

Right?

But this comes back to something you said before too about how everybody's work, work, work, and totally focused. And even when they go outside, they're doing something.

And we feel we have to justify ourselves, and the guilt and the shame—the Michelangelo flayed body—that's pushing you forward to achieve so that, well, say you're worthwhile and you'll have some reason for being here.

Versus part of what I love about Italian culture is "la dolce vita," the intrinsic notion that life is beautiful, that life is sweet, that we're here to enjoy the beauty and the pleasure of just being.

The French have something similar, which is why they just passed that law that your boss can't call you because they have "joie de vivre," the joy of living.

So, the Italians have "dolce vita," the French have "joie de vivre." Unfortunately, in the U.S., all we have is happy hour! You know, one lousy hour where you pound down some drinks before you go back to your miserable life and try to achieve more.

But this notion—which is also a Buddhist notion—about—and it's not just a notion. I think it's closer to real, to what I consider to be truth, beauty—the source of truth, beauty, and goodness—is being able to be fully present and savoring presence for its own sake.

Savoring the joy—like what's the most exquisite pleasure? Could it be breathing? Like right now?

And you know the apogee, the zenith, the solstices of the breath—the fact that we're connected to everything. We all breathe the same breath.

That as all sentient beings, it's all being. We're made of the same cosmic dust.

And what if we could just get out of our yakity-yakity-yak and be that even a little part of the time?

And don't get me wrong, I am an achiever. I'm a maniac.

It just—I have—I’ve just woken up to, "Okay, I don't have to worry." Like, that's my default setting is to work hard and achieve and be disciplined. I just grew up that way, so it's hardwired into my system.

So, the edge for me has been to learn, "Oh, how about just being? How about just being present with myself?"

And then try it in relationships—just being present with the people that you're with and let something creative emerge rather than you having to think of it through your own cleverness and effort.

You know that idea of us all being connected? And I guess if people are deep into meditation, they'll know about sort of permanent, non-abiding, non-dual awareness, etc., etc.

A more rational version of that, which I love—and I've just checked ChatGPT to make sure that it's still correct—so I asked the question, "Do we all breathe in particles of Julius Caesar's last breath?"

Yes, it's likely that we all breathe in particles from Julius Caesar's last breath because of molecular diffusion and the fact that every breath contains 10 to the 22 molecules.

While the fraction of Caesar's breath in any given inhalation is minuscule, the sheer number of molecules and the passage of time make it statistically probable that every breath we take contains some of those ancient molecules.

How f***ing cool is that?

See, but that's such a wonderful element of the amazing time we live in, whereas we can take these concepts of ancient wisdom from the Vedas, from, you know, Advaita, non-dual truth, and things that yogis went off for 40, 50 years to get anaha, and we can actually back it up with physics.

And that's, you know, it's like when I tell my business clients that, you know, we now know—we have the data that shows that if you treat all your stakeholders with care and respect and look after their welfare over time, you'll make more money.

We have the data!

So why would you think of ripping people off or exploiting the worker or your client? Because you're going to suffer; you're not going to feel good; your conscience is going to hurt you, and you won't—and you make less money.

I mean, of all of those things for me, it's—I think the little ticker in the back of your brain that knows when you did the thing that you should have done that gives you that sort of, as the kids would say, "ick" or "cringe."

That sense of like, "Oh, I shouldn't have done that."

And you know adaptively, evolutionarily, what is it? It's you thinking if somebody in the tribe saw what you just did or what you just thought, you would potentially lose status or you would maybe even be kicked out or killed, you know, in the worst situations.

But like functionally, what is that? Well, it's you being pointed toward a direction that's probably good for you over the long term.

It's the same reason that, you know, we have this tension between pleasure, enjoyment, and long-term contentment and meaning.

Like, it's a tension between the two, and a lot of the time, stuff that we do in the moment that gives us pleasure can be negative for us over the long term, and stuff that's positive for us over the long term is negative to our pleasure in the current moment.

And I really think that much of the balance with this—like the first step is just realizing this is a tension to be managed, not a problem to be solved.

Like, there's no f***ing equation that comes out the other end.

It's, you know, I'm passionate about wine. I do wine tasting team-building exercises for my clients. Over the years, I wrote a book called "Wine Drinking for Inspired Thinking."

And I got to tell you, I've really mastered the art of pleasure every day without negative consequences.

And one of the great philosophers of wine that I read said, "The art of enjoying wine is to have the greatest possible present gladness without any future misery."

So, I'm enjoying a beautiful wine, and it's so good, and I'd like to have another glass, but I just tune into my system, and I know I'll have a headache. I won't feel so good; I won't be able to function at the level.

Just say thanks, breathe in, and savor the aromas and the afterglow of a fine wine, and let that be just enough because then you get to have some more the next night or whatever it is.

Dark chocolate—I mean, I'm really focused on all the best things in life and how to enjoy them sustainably to make to more dolce in my vita and the vita of my friends and clients more joie in their vie so that every hour will be happier.

Yeah, isn't it cool? You know, like so much of this—a couple of the things that you mentioned there—wine, maybe you want a bit more, but there's also a bit of you that doesn't want a bit more.

Like, wine's wonderful, but not that much more wonderful.

Dark chocolate's a better example of something where I have never—has anybody ever gorged themselves on dark chocolate? I don't think so.

It's like after a while, it's sort of been—it's so good too that you're fulfilled.

Correct!

So, I think what you're—there's two ways to sort of look at this. Temperance maybe would say some sort of self-control.

One is develop self-control, right? Is to actually have the ability to do the willpower thing. So that would be you being able to press the accelerator harder, right?

But the other one is taking a foot off the brake, and that would be choosing environments, friends, routines, lifestyles, food choices.

Like, the reason that everybody loses weight most of the time when they switch to something like meat and fruit, right, or carnivore, is that there's only so much ground beef you can eat before you're like, "I'm f***ing sick of this."

Whereas the taste design of going to McDonald's is significantly more palatable, so you're going to eat more anyway.

Okay, so yeah, but what you said—let's just tie that up too because what I find is many people have internalized the Puritan ethic.

You got to remember the Puritans left England because they were having too much fun in England, and they wanted to be more austere.

So, they came here, and they dressed in those funky black and white costumes that look very tight and uncomfortable, and pleasure and joy of living wasn't their thing.

So, a lot of people feel that they must deny themselves, that they don't deserve goodness and the bounty of life.

Other people overdo it and get addicted.

So, whichever pole—if you're on this pole of overindulgence, you need to tighten up and get more discipline and learn, you know, the power of a positive no.

And if you're one of these folks over here who never really thought that this was possible or didn't know all the wonderful things the world has to offer you and wants to learn about the art of enjoyment, well, there's a whole beautiful world awaiting you.

Okay, I like to be the guide for those people.

A lot of my clients—

A lot of my clients over the years—

Okay, curiosity, critical thinking, next!

Sharpen your senses!

Sharpen your senses!

So, Leonardo wrote that the five senses are the ministers of the soul. He disciplined his senses; he trained his senses like an Olympic athlete would train their body for competition.

But you know what he wrote 500 years ago, 550 years ago in Tuscany? Leonardo wrote, "The average person looks without seeing, eats without tasting, breathes in without awareness of a roar or fragrance, talks without thinking."

Basically, doesn't pay attention to the beauty that's all around them.

So, he advocates in the principle of "Sensation," advocates consciously sharpening your sensory awareness.

And this becomes obviously more important as you get older.

And what's the best, most beautiful way to do it? It's to appreciate nature and appreciate beauty. Go for a walk and have a theme of, "What do I see? What are the colors I see today?"

Let's look at the different shades of green. Make that the theme of my walk today. Or my walk today, my theme will be perspective or light and shadow or what sounds do I hear?

Just, you know, just listening to the sound of birdsong in a 20-minute walk significantly raises your immune system and your creative thinking.

Taste the best the world has to offer and pay attention.

Oh, here's a big secret too: instead of one dark chocolate, do a comparative tasting. Try, you know, an 80% cacao against 85% or one from Madagascar against one from Venezuela.

Because your brain loves a theme; it loves to compare and contrast.

And you'll notice sensory nuances in the chocolate that you might have escaped you had you not compared.

Then you can do the same thing with Mona Lisa or different pieces by Bach or early Mozart, later Mozart, or Mozart's 40th Symphony conducted by von Karajan versus Bernstein.

It's amazing! Same music; it can even be the same orchestra, different conductor. You hear stuff that you never would have heard otherwise.

And it's fun!

And then you do this with other people, and you say, "Well, what did you hear?"

And here's the deal to make this most fun: there are no wrong answers.

This is not, you know, music criticism or food criticism. This is sensory enjoyment.

Because there's no wrong answer to the question, "What do you experience?"

And what's so cool is—I do this with my corporate people—they don't think they know about wine. They put their nose in the glass. People make jokes, "Oh, that smells like grapes!"

But you know, they get over their awkwardness and they get into it, and somebody says something like, "I don't know, it kind of reminds me of biting into a really ripe plum while leaning back on a haystack on a really hot day."

And somebody else goes, "Oh my God, that's just—let me taste that wine again, see if I can get that plum and that haystack."

And all of a sudden, you're not just learning about the wine; you're learning about the person, and you're connecting with the poetic soul and the poetic consciousness—the nonlinear way of being in the world, which is art, joy, beauty.

So, if we want more of that in our lives, we sharpen our senses.

Not to mention the fact that, look, my patrons are businesses, so they need to be sharper than their competition.

That means they're better at seeing what's going on; they're reading the body language of the person in the meeting. They are listening to the voice tone and noticing if there's a disconnect between the words the person's saying, the body language, and the voice tonality.

And then they'll use their cues to ask some more challenging questions so that they can fire up their ideas and get to the bottom of the situation.

So, the opposite of being sharp is being dull, and it's a sensory term.

Yeah, it's this, again, another one of those balances. I like the idea of the sharpness, but there's also this sort of element of savoring, which seems to require patience.

Kind of, "I'm going to wait and see what's there," or "I'm going to take another sip," or "I'm going to take another moment before speaking or describing or whatever."

Yeah, I've been—that's something I've been aiming to cultivate for many years as a wine drinker.

I imagine that the savoring thing is particularly important.

Okay, sharpen the senses. Sharp is what's next?

Okay, the next is "Sfumato." "Sfumato" is a term coined by art critics to refer to the hazy, mysterious quality in Leonardo da Vinci's paintings.

And what it refers to is maybe the most distinguishing characteristic of highly creative people, which is our ability to embrace the unknown.

So, everybody rushes to see the Mona Lisa, and rightfully so, because she's the most renowned, famous work of art in human history—the most recognized symbol or icon or image on the planet.

But on your way in to see her, a lot of people walk right by St. John.

And St. John in the book is actually the symbol of "Sfumato" because he's got his hand on his heart, he's pointing up to heaven, he's got a funky head tilt and smile as though he's saying, "When things are really tricky and uncertain, use your emotional intelligence, consider what your higher principles are, and keep your sense of humor."

So, Leonardo pioneered this technique, which they call "Sfumato."

Why is the Mona Lisa considered to be so amazing? Well, one reason is she's so mysterious because he blurs the lines around her eyes, around her smile—the famous smile. He blurs from her figure to the atmosphere behind her, so things seem to kind of meld into other things.

And she seems to follow you around the room. If you've ever had the opportunity to actually move around that room when it's not that crowded—which fortunately I actually had—

So, try this! We can have everybody try this all together. We do this right now.

So, just imitate Mona's smile. Get in the position. Everybody knows it.

And do your best Mona smile imitation, and then notice how it makes you feel.

That's good, man!

I could have been—whoo!

Right?

So, I was doing this with a group of gifted children, ages 8 to 11, in Rappahannock County, Virginia. And kids are so great. You ask them to do something like this, they are so earnest. They go, "They're really into it!"

And one of the kids says, "She's got a secret."

And the other kid says, "Yeah, she knows everything has an opposite."

And then the kids start saying opposites like day and night, good and bad, boys and girls, life and death.

I asked my average corporate group when we do this, and they say, "Well, I read in the Wall Street Journal that the famous smile was caused by a dental problem."

They kind of missed the point!

Mona Lisa is the Western equivalent of the ancient Eastern symbol of yin and yang. She is the embodiment of the notion of the harmony of dark and light, of good and evil, of masculine and feminine, of yin and yang.

And that's just one of the reasons she's endlessly fascinating.

It's so interesting! I was—I watched a number of videos, YouTube videos explaining it. I think it's a YouTube channel called "Great Art Explained."

Yeah!

I'm on that channel!

Great Books Explained, Great Art Explained—oh, so good!

Especially for me, right? Total Philistine, no understanding of art or how it works.

And then you have someone who has to be some sort of art scholar or whatever.

Anyway, people should go and check out "Great Art Explained."

And they do maybe an extended one, I think perhaps on the Mona Lisa.

And, yeah, you were talking before about the particular style to bring light out, but wasn't that—wasn't that because of the number of layers that he used?

Like this obscene number of like one layer, one layer, one layer—super, so gossamer thin layers of paint—hundreds of them.

So, what that does is create this effect where the light seems to suffuse from behind the canvas, creating this haunting, engaging, mysterious effect.

And you know the lesson for all of us is when you're going through a period of big change, of grave uncertainty—which we will all go through sometimes over and over again—can you maintain your emotional intelligence?

Can you maintain your connection to your star, to your higher purpose or principle? Can you maintain your sense of humor?

Which I find to be perhaps, you know, the "ha-ha" and the "aha" are first cousins—the same workings of the brain.

It's shifting you out of—it's like improv. You know improv, if we say—if we have you—you did that exercise where you name something and then name it the thing of the next thing and then name it something that it isn't.

F***, I love that idea!

I love that!

I was actually—I’ve been doing that! I saw that on your episode, and I've been doing that on my—I was doing it today!

Look at my neighbor's house, and I'm saying, "Tree!"

And I'm tree!

I'm—goddammit! My neighbors already think I'm nuts as it is!

I tried to do this a little quietly, but yeah, very good!

Okay, so "Sfumato," embracing ambiguity in the unknown.

Principle number five: "Artenza."

Artenza: integrate art and science, logic and imagination.

What people used to refer to as left and right hemisphere thinking—now we know it's actually more complex and not so easily distributed—but the metaphor still is relevant.

There's convergent thinking where we're focusing, analyzing, reducing, and there's divergent thinking where we're going off and coming up with random associations.

Way back in the 1990s, I coined the term "synergetic thinking," the synergetic integration of convergent and divergent thinking—that's "Artenza."

Leonardo—why are we here talking about him? Because he wasn't just an amazing genius scientist; he was also an amazing genius artist and inventor.

So, he integrated these modalities that we usually tend to think of as opposites—all in service of his quest for truth, beauty, and goodness.

And my old buddy, English genius guy named Tony Buzan, originated mind mapping. If you've come across mind mapping, Tony made it up, inspired by the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Edison.

He taught it to me when I was writing my master's thesis in London, and it transformed my experience of writing my master's thesis. It became my first book, and that's how I became an author.

So, it's a methodology for integrating art and science—"Artenza."

It's a really simple, elegant, practical way to think like Leonardo.

But my guidance for everybody is learn at first the old-fashioned way with actual colored pens and big sheets of paper before you do it on your computer.

It's great to do it on your computer; it's amazing the programs that have come out—lots of free, great ones.

But learn it the artisanal, old-fashioned way because when you draw, it activates circuitry in your brain.

You want some serious neuroplasticity? Get the colored pens, make some mind maps, and you will be thinking like Leonardo da Vinci.

There's a program for Mac which is free called MindNode.

It's not quite—it’s more tiered, so it's basically, how would you say, like nested bullet points but presented visually.

And super easy to use, which is the most important thing for me.

And I love MindNode!

So, I use MindNode. I haven't used it that much recently, to be honest, but I used it in the past when I was planning out talks and other bits and pieces.

I think one of the—certainly, if I was to lay an issue or a pathology at the feet of modern society, it would certainly not be that there's too much art or imagination.

You know, it's very sort of left-brainy; it's very rational. It's tied in with the cynicism thing.

How can somebody that thinks, "This sounds great! I'd love to inhabit my sort of creative, imaginative, artistic Da Vinci energy more," what are some of the things that can help to sort of pull people out in that way?

Well, really learning and practicing mind mapping is the go-to, most practical way to really do it because then you can learn to make mind maps of your plan for the day.

You can plan a dinner party. You can make a—the last exercise in the book is a mind map of all your life goals, dreams, visions, values, your different areas of life.

And then you get to look at them and see the gestalt of it all while you also get more detail because you put in keywords, you print those keywords so they're easy to read, and you draw images or creative doodles that go with them.

So, you're stimulating the imaginative part of your mind and the detailed, focused, analytical part of your mind simultaneously.

So, you get a huge amount of information in a very small space, and it's fun!

Yeah, okay, next up!

Next, "Corporal."

Corporal: balance the body and the mind.

So, we all know that Leonardo was an artistic genius. Many people know he was also a scientific genius, a great inventive genius.

But he was also physically gifted. He was renowned as the strongest man in Florence. He was a master equestrian, a fencer.

History records that he also was a juggler, which I was thrilled to discover since I worked my way through graduate school as a professional juggler.

He loved to walk. He walked through the countryside for miles and miles and miles with his notebooks.

And he gives advice in his notebooks to his students. Remember I told you he actually tells you what to do?

I just figured out what he was saying, translated into contemporary terms.

One of the things he says is, "Learn to preserve your own health."

Today, we might call that integrative medicine or functional medicine.

"Learn to preserve your own health. Take responsibility for your health and wellness."

He says, "Avoid grievous moods and keep your mind cheerful."

Well, today we call that psychoneuroimmunology, right? Your attitude affects your immune system moment to moment.

He says, "Eat a healthy, wholesome diet of the freshest foods that you can find."

He says, "If possible, dine with friends."

The Italians have a saying: "A tavola non si invecchia." You know, with others, you don't grow old.

He says, "Have a little red wine with dinner—in moderation."

He says, "Get moderate exercise every day. Have plenty of fresh water. Be in nature."

What else do you need to know?

So, that fitness—looking after the body, looking after the mind.

But there's the elements of grace and poise.

Yes! What does that specifically mean? Because that, I think, to me, is a very different sort of word.

Yes! So, Leonardo was renowned for his grace and poise in his own movement.

The chroniclers of the time recorded that people would turn out just to watch him walk down the street because he moved with so much poise and grace.

And part of why, especially when you go see the drawings—I’ve seen them close up at the Ambrosiana in Milan and in Windsor Castle and in a few other places with special exhibitions—the grace of the lions that he creates, the drapery that he enfolds St. Anne or the Madonna, the curls of the hair in the Ginevra de' Benci, which is in the National Gallery—you can go see it for free in Washington, D.C.

So, they're all indicative of this sense of just having the right amount of energy in the right place at the right time, which is one of the secrets of life.

And it's an element that's often missed in a lot of physical training. You know, people go to the gym, and they're trying to just push the most weight they can. They want to achieve the goal.

But you see these people, they're torturing themselves; they lose their form. I see runners and walkers everywhere doing more harm to themselves than good because they've lost poise and grace in their movement.

So, I trained originally as an Alexander Technique teacher in London many years ago, which is a genius methodology for cultivating poise and grace in your everyday movement.

And Leonardo is one of the supreme examples of that quality.

Okay, and what's the final one?

"Connect."

"Connect." Everything connects to everything else.

Leonardo wrote that in his notebook: everything connects to everything else.

So, today we would call that systems thinking—looking at how things that you might not ordinarily think are related are actually related.

Like how Julius Caesar is in your nose right now!

So, that ability to really see the big picture, to see how—just to think things through in a—what are the potential unintended consequences?

The negative—people call them side effects when it's a drug, but they're really effects; they're just effects.

So, what's the state of this project we're doing? What's the state of this product that we're launching, of this plan I am making?

How do I see—he guides us. He asks us to do that.

And what I guide people to try to do that with their own lives is just, you know, what's your purpose? What are your values? What are your goals?

And how do they all fit together? And what are you actually doing every day?

And is what you're doing every day out of alignment with what you say your purpose, values, and goals are?

And how can you make little shifts?

I mean, I know you know this—little shifts every day lead to really big shifts in a surprisingly short amount of time.

But it helps to not just say, "I'm gonna get fit."

And you just focus—no! How do—why are you getting fit? How are you doing it? When are you going to do it? Where are you going to do it?

That fits in with the questions we laid out earlier.

And asking those questions about every aspect of your life, and then you can take these and put them in one mind map and make symbols for each one and some keywords.

Put that on your desk. I have mine right over there. I keep redoing it. I've been doing this for a really long time.

But it helps us stay on track to that star that Leonardo talked about.

And believe me, it comes in handy when you have to navigate through storms.

Yeah, intentionality—intentionalism is a word that me and a lot of my friends are pretty addicted to.

Like doing the thing that you mean to do, right?

Well, that's a positive addiction!

I'm—yeah, because the default setting is not—programming is conditioning, is reactivity, is unconsciousness, is somebody else's intention that was set to manipulate you and control your life.

So, set your intention and set it in a systems way and make images that go with it so you're not just doing it linearly, but you're also doing it with your imagination.

And it's plus, it's more fun!

Michael Gelb, ladies and gentlemen!

Michael, awesome!

I have this new Leonardo da Vinci documentary that's coming out. I think it'll be out actually once this episode is done, so I'm sure a lot of people will be wanting to learn more.

So, I really appreciate your work and the many trips and pages that you had to go through in order to be able to glean these insights.

Where should people go if they want to keep up to date with the stuff you do?

Thank you! MichaelGelb.com. That's Gelb, MichaelGelb.com.

And when they go to MichaelGelb.com and they sign up for our free newsletter, we send them a 14-page handout on how to do mind mapping for free.

So, MichaelGelb.com is the place to go.

Thank you!

Heck yeah! Appreciate you, Michael!

Thank you!

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