What you perceive, you receive 👇
It might be hard to accept (especially if our lives currently suck) but the way that we CHOOSE to perceive our lives can affect the way that we LIVE our lives.
To make things even more complicated, we often make UNCONSCIOUS CHOICES about what we perceive because of our underlying emotional ‘stuff’ and the demands of our ego so we can keep the SHADOW SELF at bay.
As a general rule we can say this:
If you REPEATEDLY get things that you don’t want from life or things never seem to go your way then you probably have some inner work to do with the things that drive your perceptions.
Luckily, this is something that we can ALL DO because – whether it feels like it or not sometimes – we all have power over our own INNER STATE and the things that we ALLOW into our experience.
It starts with you but it ends with you too.
In this episode of Creative Status, I had the pleasure of speaking with Sam Furness, the founder of Channel Twelve, a creative project that encourages people to broaden their perceptions and embrace different forms of creativity.
What stood out to me the most about Sam was his ability to flow effortlessly around these topics and translate his personal experiences into practical lessons. He has a talent for breaking down complex ideas into easy-to-understand concepts which makes his lessons easier to integrate and act on.
Sam understands that creativity stems from following your intuition, releasing yourself from assumptions and pretensions, and allowing your work to emerge naturally. It’s this philosophy that has helped him unlock his own creativity and inspire others to do the same with the creative ‘Quests’ he leads with the Channel Twelve project.
We also discussed the power of changing our perceptions and how it can unlock endless possibilities in our lives. Sam’s year-long challenge of immersing himself in a new creative pursuit each month not only led to a more diverse and fulfilling lifestyle, but also sparked a new level of creativity and innovative thinking.
Through Channel Twelve’s Quests and Projects, Sam aims to help others broaden their creative focus and enjoy playful lifestyles that are illuminated by curiosity. Overall, this conversation was a deep dive into the power of changing our perceptions and embracing our creative potential.
If you’re looking to level up your artistic game or just want some inspiration on how to live a more fulfilling life, then this episode is a must-listen. Tune in to learn more from Sam’s inspiring journey and his philosophy on creativity.
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(Scroll down for the show transcript)
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Episode Links:
Sam’s Channel Twelve website: channeltwelve.co.uk
Sam on Instagram: instagram.com/saaamfurness
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Show Transcript: Perception, Creativity & the Other Side of Truth
Intro
Oli Anderson: Oh hi there, Oli Anderson here, you’re listening to Creative Status. This is a podcast about using your creativity to improve your life at the deepest possible level, ultimately the level of your relationship with yourself and then by extension, everybody else in the world. And if you’re feeling particularly grand eloquent and excitable, you could even say it’s going to help you improve your relationship with reality as a whole.
Wow, don’t want to over promise though. If you don’t know, my name is Oli Anderson. I am a creative performance coach and I basically help people to be more real in their lives and their businesses. For me, being real is ultimately just about connecting to a feeling of wholeness, which is something that you will have heard me talk about on this podcast previously if you’ve listened and if you’ve never heard it before and you decide to listen, then you basically will hear me talking about that.
Today’s episode is an interview with a guy called Sam Furness. He has a project called Channel 12, which I would basically summarize as being a community of people that come together around the value of creativity and take themselves with Sam’s facilitation on what he calls quests.
Each quest is ultimately a way of playing with perception so you can see something new in yourself and in life and to basically play with the way that you relate with the world around you and allow more realness, shall we say, just so I can be a walking cliche into your own experience. This interview was super chill in my opinion. Sam’s a super chill guy.
It unfolded organically and ultimately we talked about how the idea of these quests allows people to see things that they might not see, how it can help people to get out of their comfort zones and all that kind of stuff and to expand and to grow. But then on a slightly deeper level, we talked about this thing to do with perception and how playing with our perceptions can really change our lives.
It fits into an idea that’s come up a few times already on this podcast and I’m always throwing around out there which is that we don’t see the world as it is but as we are. Some people can be resistant to that because if their life kind of sucks and they’re just seeing all this chaos and confusion and misery all around them, they don’t necessarily want to take responsibility and say, okay, maybe I’m playing a role in this.
But if you can just play with the idea and say, okay, my inner state is reflected in the outer world around me, then you realize that you have a lot more power over your life than you may initially believe. And so this whole thing of perception really is something that’s truly important, I think, when it comes to improving our lives, which is basically the main theme of this podcast, as I probably already said. So anyway, I’m going to stop rambling, but there’s some really good stuff in this interview.
Sam, thank you so much for letting me interview you and for giving me your time. I just randomly stumbled across Sam on the internet and then reached out to him. So thank you for going down the rabbit hole of just letting this strange person get in touch with you and then ask you a bunch of questions.
Anyway, here’s the interview and I hope you all get some stuff out of it. And thanks so much. I’ll see you next Monday for another episode of Creative Status.
Interview
Oli Anderson: Oh, hi there, Sam. Thank you so much for joining me today on Creative Status. Based on what we’ve said previously in our little pre-chat, we’re going to cover some kind of philosophical issues around creativity and perception and spirituality.
But before we dive down that little rabbit hole, do you feel like introducing yourself and just telling people who you are, how you ended up working in this area of creativity as a whole and what you’re hoping to get out of this conversation?
Sam Furness: Sure. Yeah, well, it’s great to be here. Thank you very much for the invite, Ollie. So my name is Sam Finesse and I am the founder and quest leader at Channel 12. We produce experiences, workshops and content that help people and organisations explore sort of different sides of their creative potential and different ways to see the world around them.
There’s a kind of a bunch of different ways that we we do this predominantly through a programme that’s been running for the last two years called Creative Quests, which is a monthly kind of club that people sign up to from from all over the world. Each quest has a theme.
We have themes that explore those workshops, guest speakers, challenges that we set people between our workshops in a sort of an in an effort to get people just exploring different sort of corners of their their creative self. That’s been a project that’s been before it was a thing that other people signed up to. It was a project of mine, personal project for about five years previous to that. So it’s kind of in terms of how I got to work in creativity, it’s been a winding path to setting up my own thing.
It’s still I’m still only a year into it being a full time full time job. And what am I hoping to get out of this conversation? Well, I personally find that I personally think I’m my most fluid when I’m in conversation with somebody else. So I always look forward to having conversations about creativity with other creative people that are on the journey because it’s it’s always in that sort of toing and froing that new new understandings of things emerge, right?
Oli Anderson: Yeah, that’s the main idea of this rambling podcast that I’ve created. So normally as we go through it, like me and whoever I’m talking to new insights will kind of emerge in that to and fro that you’ve mentioned. And I think that is the creative process in a way.
If we’re doing it right, if we’re both coming out from a kind of real point of view, hopefully that’s what’s going to happen in terms of what you just said about your work and all that kind of stuff. What was the main idea behind the quest thing? So why did you decide that sending people in your community on these little quests was going to be something that would help them?
Sam Furness: The root of it goes back about seven years, beginning of 2016. I have been working in the music industry, managing music artists for four or so years at this point. And I loved that job. Being a music manager is great fun. You get to do lots of great things. And I was really fortunate to work with some amazing music artists. But as my roots are in making things myself, you know, theater music predominantly. And your job as a manager is to really be the behind the scenes person.
It’s certainly not to be the artist. And over time, it felt like that part of me was getting neglected. And it was really, I was giving all of my creative self to the artist project I was working on. So I just did, I set myself this challenge for a year in 2016 to explore a different form of creativity in my spare time each month.
And just making that time for myself and having a sort of a theme to follow, a simple kind of boundary to follow each month that, you know, I had a month to do it and I had a theme to explore. It just kind of reignited my creative spirit in a really significant way. And I learned a lot of that year about how spending time with different creative mediums can really, really not just upskill you to, you know, get better at painting or origami or whatever it happens to be that you’re exploring.
But also these, they can kind of become, these themes can kind of become little wayfinding tools for day to day life as well. So really this project to kind of be a bit more creative in my spare time really developed into like, sort of like, oh, this could just be like a way that I, this could be like a practice that I sort of adopt in my life when I need it to kind of top back up when I’m feeling creatively depleted or I wanna discover some new things or meet some new people. Just felt like a useful tool for many reasons.
And yeah, it took many, many years of development and eventually it became something where I turned it into something that other people could join. So it’s quite different now. It’s different as a format, but in, I say, yeah, it’s different in format, but its spirit is exactly the same. It really is.
Like it is exactly the same as it was seven years ago. It is like, get out into the world, explore it from a slightly different point of view, be a magnet for serendipity because you’re opening yourself up to it. And see where it takes you.
It’s not, you know, it’s very process led. Sometimes these quests end up developing projects out the back of them. Sometimes they’re just a great way to spend a month, you know? Yeah, that’s kind of how people are on this journey. And yeah, we’re two years and eight quests deep now as a community platform.
Oli: Wow. So it sounds like initially it started off as you were just trying to find new ways to mix things up. So different mediums, maybe different themes for different artistic projects, whatever it was. But over time, this has evolved into something that’s actually a lot deeper than just the variety part. So it sounds like actually, as you go through these different quests, you start to see the world in a slightly different way.
That opens you up or the person, the people doing the quests, up to seeing themselves in different ways. And then that gets onto this thing that you said about being open to serendipity and allowing life to kind of merge into whatever it is that you’re becoming.
If that doesn’t sound too pretentious. So is that a fair assessment of what’s happened?
Sam Furness: It’s a perfect assessment of what’s happening. Yeah, really smashed it. I’m gonna go back through this and steal that for the website. Right. Yeah, that’s exactly it.
It really, there was no grand plan at the beginning. This was, it was very much naive. It was quite naive, really. It was like, honestly, I thought, I’m gonna learn, I’m gonna find a new hobby.
That was kind of the goal. It was like, I wanna learn a new hobby through exploring what I perceive as other people’s creativity. And maybe along the way, I’ll find a new thing.
Because my thing was kind of music and theater. And when I started the project in 2016, those things just weren’t calling out to me. And so that’s why I was like, well, maybe I’ll just try something new each month and I’ll find the new thing. And by the end of the year, I can just take photography or animation or color or whatever it happens to be that I explored. And me and photography can live happily ever after.
And that was it. But really, actually, I fell in love with the process of like, wow.
Oli Anderson: Do you think people… Sorry, sorry. Do you think people tend to fall in love with specific mediums?
And when they do that, they begin to identify with whatever that is. So for example, a lot of photographers, they seem to love the idea of being a photographer more than the photographs themselves, if that makes sense. And so when people become so attached to it like that, it actually ends up killing their creativity.
And so if I understand what you’re doing right with these quests, the quest is ultimately about, connecting to a deeper version of themselves or awakening different parts that may have been hiding for a while or whatever it is. And then that allows them to have a better relationship with the creative process as a whole.
Sam Furness: Yeah, exactly. And we get a real mix of people join these quests, whether it’s people that are looking to just get more creativity in general in their life, and make time for more creativity in their life by kind of joining a community where there’s accountability and inspiration and new friends and that kind of thing.
But also we do have people join that are practicing creatives, artists, that are using it as a tool to kind of throw a spanner in the works of their own process. And… And yeah, using it as a tool to stay sharp. You know, when I first started doing it, it was very much a tool to get my creativity back. Seven years on, like I certainly don’t feel like I, I’m lacking any creativity in my life at all.
There’s an abundance of that. But so now this has really evolved into a process about keeping my creative tools sharp ever evolving, keeping my perceptual skills ever evolving, because it all feeds back into your sense of creativity. And I think what you’re capable of creating, I think it all starts with what you are open to sort of attracting. You know, I often think of creative quests as like, it’s almost like changing your diet. It’s like, you know, there’s that saying, like you are what you eat.
I think it’s really the same for creativity. And I guess the, like the, what would it be? The analogy would be more like, you are what you seek or something like that, you know?
Like that is, it’s much more about the things that you surround yourselves with and the things that you’re curious about are the things that end up becoming a part of you and sitting with you. And they then become, those things become inklings. And then those inklings become like curiosities and those curiosity, curiosities become ideas and ideas become projects and projects become whatever, you know, it’s, but I think it all starts with this openness to, just something.
Yeah, so yeah, it’s people join for all kinds of reasons. And I think you’re exactly right back to your point about, it’s not obviously just photographers, like any person, I think expertise is a great thing. And I never want creative quest or the way I speak about it to be sort of bashing the idea of mastery. Like I think being in it, being really highly skilled at something is amazing.
But I think a master of something is always open to evolution in some way.
Oli Anderson: So this is where this conversation is probably gonna start to open up a little bit because for me, the whole creative process is just about tapping back into our humanity. And that sounds very kind of, you know, highfalutin and lofty, but all I mean by that is that the creative process allows human beings to keep evolving, to keep growing, to keep expanding.
And when we put ourselves on that path towards expansion or whatever word you wanna use, what we’re actually doing is moving towards a deeper sense of wholeness within ourselves. And so I feel and believe and have understood in my own life with my own journey that if we’re struggling to be creative, if we’re struggling to express something, then we have put some kind of a fragmentary block in our own path that is stopping us from being open in the way that you’re talking about and that causes us to just feel stuck.
And there’s all these different ways that we can become fragmented. Maybe we have an emotional block. And so we identify as a version of ourselves that kind of tries to keep those emotions at bay. Maybe we get too identified with a certain label, like we’ve just unfairly tarnished photographers with and all those kind of things.
But- Sorry to my photographer, Brent, I love you. Yeah, me too, okay. So if we can understand this, then we can put ourselves in situations like quests, ultimately, that are gonna push the boundaries of what we think we know about ourselves. And when we get to the edge of whatever that is, when we stretch ourselves, that’s where the idea meets reality and something new can come in, some new insight. And so to bring all this rambling back to what you’re saying, at the start of your journey with the quest thing, you said, you know, you’d lost touch with your creativity and all that kind of stuff.
And now you don’t really have that issue. So what would you say is the main transformation that you went through as a result of, you know, putting yourself in these new situations and bringing more variety to the table?
Sam Furness: I think the main thing was going from seeing creativity is something that I needed to find time to do. More into a kind of just ever present approach to like living a life.
That really was it. And that often actually, I think sometimes the thing that we’re seeking isn’t necessarily to, and maybe this is just my view, but I think a lot of the time we’re seeking the feeling, you know, like, and a lot of the time, I think the feeling is that we’re seeking is a kind of connection to other people or the places that we live, our communities, or obviously ourselves.
And I think you can do, well, certainly for me, I can get to that place now without necessarily having to make a project at the end of it. You know, sometimes the projects really do kind of just, you’re just so overflowing with ideas and inspiration that there’s just no option but to make the thing. And that’s an amazing place to be where the project just feels like it’s kind of making itself, not without hard work, of course, but, you know, I think, yeah, it’s, it’s, I think, that’s the main difference is that to me now I can, I feel like I get as much satisfaction from kind of just always being in the processes as I am with actually putting something out in the world.
I guess it’s the seeing your life like as the art project. It’s very meta, but in, and there’s a great quote that we came across on our poetry quest in January 2021. So our first quest that we did as a community, one of the best, a because it was the first one and it was just all felt brand new and I was just breaking myself from start to finish. Like, oh my God is this thing that I’ve been doing for five years, like actually going to work with a group of people who are these people that signed up. Like it was people from all over the world. It was mid lockdown.
It was just, it was very, very exciting and very Holson. But one of the quotes that we came across that month and I can’t remember who it’s by easily Google Googleable though was if you can’t be a poet be a poem. I just love that. Like to me that is like a great example of that’s like the most perfect quote for what creative quest is for me exploring poetry for a month.
You probably like by the end of it, you’re probably not going to identify as a poet, but you’ll feel poetry in your life like well without a shadow of a doubt. And I think I think it’s that. Yeah, read back to the perception thing.
The pro quest process is really a kind of unlearning process as it much as much as a learning process. It’s kind of re examining what your relationship is with the thing that we’re exploring together and yeah themes range from stuff like poetry, photography, animation, like more medium based things through to much broader stuff like time, home, colour patterns.
Oli: Yeah. So I suppose all those different lenses of the different topics that you’re using for the quest itself, all of those different lenses end up giving you a filter for viewing life through.
Ultimately. So you know, all art, all creative projects, no matter what medium they’re in, ultimately they are dealing with the same subject matter which is life and the human experience. And so I suppose if you put one of those filters on and view your life through it, like you said, it will give you something new that you can do in the way that you live. And so is it fair to say that as you know, you personally you’ve gone through this journey of losing touch with your creativity at the start and then getting back in touch with it.
You’ve just learned to perceive life differently as a consequence of all of these things you’ve been doing. So it’s the perception that’s made the difference to your creative drive.
Sam: Perceptions definitely made the difference and that that’s been the biggest surprise, I guess, and the thing that I’m, I guess that I’m most, to be honest, kind of most proud of with with creative quest developing is that it has developed this like I had no interest or idea about perceptions seven years ago like I knew it was a word and I knew what it meant but I didn’t really think about it in terms of creativity.
But through the process of of doing these quests each month and I’m, I think I’m like 25 or so different themes deep at this point. It was just a really amazing thing to notice was like wow my experience of London is really different when I’m exploring food to when I’m exploring animation or the things that I find interesting on my walk to work when I’m thinking about patterns versus when I’m thinking about, I don’t know, whatever, like whatever it might storytelling.
And it’s just really got me really interested in this like, and I feel like I’m really just at the very beginning of this curiosity of like really digging deep into like the science of perception like what does shape the way that we see the world like through creative quest I’ve learned very clear and I’ve learned very clearly that the things that we’re passionate about really shape the way that we see the world around us.
The way that yeah skateboarder sees the world is different to the way that a climate activist sees the world, you know, and it and you know and any any other iterations of that like that’s through speaking to lots of interesting people and actually exploring these things myself that’s that’s super clear.
But yeah, I, I feel like I’m literally just just paddling in in that subject which is of course hugely vast because it takes you into the whole world of neuroscience and neuro aesthetics and yeah I’m no, I’m no pro on any of that stuff so I’m that’s kind of curious that’s where I’m curious to go to go next with it for sure.
Oli: So what would you say is the, you know, the main lesson when it comes to this perception thing. In terms of, I suppose, being more creative, obviously, but also at this deeper level that you’ve allowed this to branch out into you which is, you know, of life itself. So how does, you know, what what changes can we consciously make, I guess, in the way that we try to have control over the way we perceive life, the way that we manage our beliefs even and all that kind of stuff in order to be more creative and to have a better life as a whole.
Sam: Yeah, there’s a great quote by a neuroscientist who I got to know over the last few years of kind of being more interested in in this side of creativity called Beau Lotto. He is founder of a studio called Lab of Misfits and he has a great book called Deviate.
Yeah, I came across a couple of years ago, maybe like two, couple of months before I launched Channel 12 and then our first Quest series in that following January. And I kind of just devoured this book and it’s just a really, really well written approachable, but scientific book on perception and creativity, the intersection between the two.
There’s actually a, I actually interviewed him, there’s a good interview with me and him on on the channel 12 Instagram on our videos somewhere, somewhere way back from March 2021 – if people want to check it out. And there’s a quote in that book which I kind of come back to a lot because it just perfectly described what I was experiencing which was change your ecology, change your brain. And you know that essentially means your ecology being the things that you’re kind of surrounded with.
If you want to change your brain the way you think, you know, the way that you perceive, the way you understand, you have to change the things that surround you. And not just like a one-time thing, it’s like really spend time in different environments, you know, around different conversations. And this can be, this sounds like a massive thing, like, oh my god, how do I change the ecology of my life?
Like, it’s, it sounds, but there’s super easy ways to do that. Like, you can, you know, you can change the things you watch on Netflix. Like, you know, not rely on the his for you, you know, like the internet is a really a nettle, is a dangerous place for that, because it’s, it’s algorithms are constantly adapting to make them, to make the whole architecture of the internet you experienced, to make it appear more like you.
And, and, but the great thing about algorithms is that they’re actually really fickable, fickable, that’s not a word, a really, really fickle and easily led, you know, you can jump on Twitter or Instagram or whatever and, and follow 20 new accounts for something that you didn’t know much about, like color or time or whatever. And your, your silly algorithm will just try and catch up with you.
And it’ll be like, Oh, okay, well, do you want some of this and do you want some of that? And then suddenly, you know, when you’re logging into your Twitter, Instagram, whatever, it actually looks a little bit different. And the messages, they’re a little bit different.
And so I think I could go on about this all day, but it’s, it’s like very, very simply, it is, you can, you can change your input with, with where you put your time and attention. There’s a really simple exercise that we do, which we call take a theme for a walk. So it’s one of the very first things that we do on a creative quest. After our first session, it’s very simple, everyone just has to take the theme we’re exploring for a walk for around the place they live or wherever they happen to be, you can do it literally anywhere.
And it’s just like, where does the theme show up when you start looking at the world through that theme, storytelling, animation, what, you know, whatever it happens to be. And it’s, it’s really amazing. It really is astounding. Every single time you will notice something that you did not notice, or you’ll, you’ll notice something you see all the time, but you’ll see it differently.
And, well, yeah, yeah, you will see it differently. And so I think that’s the main takeaway for me is like, if you want to disrupt or sort of shake up your creativity, you have to open yourself up to spending time in, in, in new environments.
You know, I think our best creative ideas are born in, they’re not born in the familiar, the best, our best creative ideas are born in somewhere between what we know to be true, and something new and surprising. And I think it’s like in the middle of that kind of Venn diagram of our truth and something new and surprising in the world that really great creativity, whether it’s artistic or innovation, that’s where it’s born.
It’s like looking at the something with a new, with a new lens.
Oli: I think as well, there’s a really important point that can be made about the active use of our perceptions. So what you said about social media is very true, very important. A lot of social media just ends up being a vortex for the most important assets that we have, which I think you’ve mentioned some of them, but our time, energy and attention, we’re all going to die one day.
So that means that those things are incredibly precious. And if we’re just being passive and we allow the algorithm or all of the robots that have been designed to suck away our attention, to direct where our perception goes, then eventually our lives will be an extension of whatever that is. And so the approach you’re talking about actually is a lot more active, is ultimately an active way of directing what we perceive in the world so that whatever we’re giving our time, energy and attention to via those perceptions is going to grow instead of just the passive things that we may be getting sucked into without even realizing on social media or elsewhere.
And so this goes back to what you were saying about, don’t be the poetry, be the poem. So if people in general are trying to grow, trying to evolve, trying to expand in the way that we were talking about, then that almost always means that they, that the starting point or that they’re in the midst of some kind of a transformation. So in simple terms, they’re at point A, they want to be at point B.
Getting to point B is just about giving your attention to the things that are going to help you get there. So that might be managing our own thoughts, thinking about what we do want instead of what we don’t want, for example, thinking about how we can live our values and intentions and blah, blah, blah. And so actually, if we try to perceive things that are going to allow us to become that version of ourselves that we’re trying to be, then that’s a very powerful thing.
And it means that the perception is actually allowing us to create the life that we want. I don’t know if I’m making that sound too simple, but do you think that is something people could actively do? And that they may have actually been doing anyway, as part of these quests, without necessarily realizing that’s what they were doing?
Oli: Yeah, yeah, I think creative quest is definitely not an A to B process. But it’s, I mean, actually coming back, there’s another thing that Beau Lotto from Lava Misfit says, he, I think he’s talking, he’s kind of talking about transmission and change. And he says like, the goal is not to go from A to B, it’s to go from A to not A, which I think is just cool.
And I think it’s a little bit more like that. It’s like, it’s, it’s really seeing creativity and whatever way that manifests in your life, whether you’re an artist or like, you know, some of the most creative people I’ve met in the last few years have been like sports people, you know, like it doesn’t, I don’t think of, of creativity as being, you know, limited to the arts in any way.
But it’s, it’s kind of, yeah, feeling your, feeling your way into it, you might, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s an emergent process. You know, I think, you know, we say with, with people that sign up to, to the quest, this isn’t, you know, this, like as a disclaimer on the website that says, this is not a course.
This is not a course, this is an invitation. And some people look at that and be like, what a load of wishy-washy rubbish. But it’s not a course, like it’s, it’s not, it is not an A to B, like, type thing, like you’re going to have forexed your skills on this, and you’re going to have, you know, done that.
It’s, it’s much, much looser than that. And it really is an, it’s an invitation for people to come on a creative exploration journey, process, adventure, however you want to frame it. And see what, see what happens. It really, and be as, yeah, back to the thing from the beginning, be open to the serendipity.
Oli: Serendipity, yeah. Yeah. The, the spiritual side of this that you kind of mentioned at the start, but definitely mentioned in the little pre-chat, how does, how does that come into it from the, the point of being creative?
So, I suppose the first question, just to open this up, do you think that if people are, you know, in touch with their spiritual selves, whatever words you want to use there instead of spiritual, are they more creative and more open to the kind of serendipity that you’re talking about?
I would say so. What do you think about that?
Sam: Yeah, it’s, it’s, I mean, I would, I would broadly say yes. It’s, I find myself when I get asked these questions, I like, I go through my head and I feel like I’m like, rolodex’ing every single theme that we’ve explored or created, quests and going, hmm, does that question sit with this one?
Does it sit against that one? And it’s not a very helpful way of doing it, but that’s just little insight into how my brain works. I do think people that are more open to, to magic is also a very overused word, but just, yeah, the, the feel, the, the, yeah, the, the, the, yeah, it is magic.
Like the feeling of, of being surprised, being illuminated by something, having your heart opens by a small bit by a conversation with somebody, and feeling really, really changed by that. You know, I think that’s a spirit, I think that’s a spiritual process for sure.
I’ve been, I haven’t quite developed this metaphor enough to start lambasting it around, but maybe I’ll try it out here. I’ve started thinking about creativity as almost like a kind of belief system. And not in the kind of, not in a religious sense, although I’m sure for some it is, not for me personally, but I think it really is something, it’s something that a people believe they have or they don’t. And then I think within this kind of belief system of creativity, there’s all different kinds of beliefs, right? There’s some that see creativity as connected to, you know, a universal divine kind of power. There’s some that see creative spirituality as more about the spirit with which you move through the world and the values that you want to instill through your actions and the things you make and the things you do.
So yeah, it’s, I’m trying to play, I’m sort of beginning to play with this terminology a little bit. And how, and I’m not sure I’d ever put this on the website, but it really is, creative question in some ways is about helping people on into this belief system. You know, that there’s, sounds quite culty at this point, doesn’t it, Jesus? Now that I’m saying it out loud, it sounds very, very cult.
Well, I didn’t want to point that out. No, it’s, yeah, it’s, no, it’s, I don’t mean it to sound culty at all, but I just mean the self belief, you know, like the belief that people, that you can feel more creative, that you can see the world in different ways. Yeah, it’s, it’s, you go through one of the things that’s really amazing on a creative quest is really like noticing when the universe, you want to, is like really aligned with where you’re at. And lots of the people on our quest to call it, this, this came from them, not me, they’re like, call it quest magic where, you know, we were exploring a theme for the month and And then suddenly all these things start popping up that’s really relevant.
And you’re like, whoa, how amazing that this very specific like conference or this like event or this thing happened like right in front of me today. And it’s like so, it’s like all of it’s like the universe is going like, here’s a gift, here’s a gift, here’s a gift. And Julia Cameron in the artist’s way calls it, I think she calls it like synchronicity, you know?
Like when you feel synchronous with the world around you. And I guess quest magic is kind of our like version of something like that. I have a very sort of actually, I’d say unspiritual sort of idea that sort of devil’s advocate for this, which is like maybe this stuff is happening all the time.
You just didn’t notice it because you weren’t thinking about the theme that we’re thinking about. I spent my time going between that school of thought and this is totally the universe being magic man.
Oli: Yeah, yeah. Like actually that’s one of the big questions I used to have in my life. Well, is it just a mere coincidence or is it synchronicity?
There’s something much bigger going on. And now I 100 % lean towards, you know, the synchronicity side of way of perceiving things. I find when I’m really in the creative flow state, so when I’m not getting in my own way and I’m open to serendipity and what it has to teach me and blah, blah, blah sSynchronicity is just something that does happen way more.
I don’t know why that happens. I can’t really explain it. Synchronicity is a term that Cal Jung came up with, I think, and he believes it’s something to do with the collective unconscious and all this kind of stuff. Either way, I just take it as a good sign that I’m on the right path, I guess, and that I am aligned.
And so here is another curveball question kind of related to that: I think that the creative process ultimately, no matter what medium it is, and that includes things that aren’t traditionally thought of as creative endeavors. So like you were saying, like being an athlete can be a creative thing. You know, you could be a taxi driver or something and you could still do it in a creative way.
Like anything literally can be creative. I think all that really happens if you go into that creative process is you just end up raising your awareness of certain natural laws or certain realities about life and existence that apply to all of us.
And that’s why all of these creative endeavors are just a doorway into the same thing. And when you raise your awareness, all that really means is that you get your identity out of the way and you stop blocking your view of the way that life actually is.
And so when you stop blocking the view, you’re perceiving things more clearly and then you can flow and you can keep going and expanding and moving towards wholeness or whatever we want to call it. And that is when, you know, we get more synchronicity in general, but also it just means we’re actually moving with life instead of against it. And I think that’s basically, you know, all that spirituality is, is that it’s just finding a path into that way of being.
And I think all the religions are basically saying the same thing, which is that they’re just giving a slightly different path into, you know, this state. So how does that, you know, fit into all of the things that you’ve learned and experienced, you know, over the last few years doing this quest thing? If it does.
Sam: Yeah, there’s parts of it. I think it kind of, one thing that we, that always kind of comes up is this, like changing, well, changing of perception of the thing that we are exploring. One of the main things that I hope people get from a creative quest is that they see the thing they’re exploring differently to how they saw it at the beginning. And therefore, you see yourself differently because you’ve kind of changed your idea of what you thought was true. And you’re like, oh, suddenly this other version of this is true.
And through that, you might have actually completely changed the way that you view a whole group of people. Like poetry was a perfect one. We started with poetry. I knew it was gonna be a tricky, I knew it would be a powerful one. I hadn’t done a poetry quest before, but I just kind of sensed it enough over the years to know what are good themes.
And I thought poetry is a really good one. And it was January, it just felt like a good one to get the year started with. I would say that 75 % of the people that joined because when people sign up to a quest, they generally don’t know what the theme is gonna be. That’s quite a key part is that you’re taking this plunge to go on like this month with a group of people to explore something you don’t know what it’s gonna be. You find out your days before.
And I’d say probably 75 % of the 30 people that we had at that point were like, oh, God’s sake, you’re kidding me. Like you’re signed up for a creative adventure and we’re exploring poetry. Yeah. And to me, that felt like, okay, game on.
Let’s see if this process really works. And I would say like, honestly, 90 plus percent of the skeptics were really, will still now say, oh yeah, I don’t see, I won’t see poetry the same ever, ever again. And or see poets the same ever, ever again. That it’s like, you know, that it’s, poetry is obviously also wrapped up with kind of classroom, you know, English lessons and all this kind of stuff and like it’s pretentious and whatnot. And I think the most powerful thing that as a group we collectively learn on the poetry quest, and this comes back to what I was saying earlier about it not being a course.
Like me and my very small team that plan these quests, we’re not like, okay, by the end of the month we want everybody to perceive poetry as X because We have a framework that we follow.
We design a couple of sessions, but really the process is kind of, is the people doing it and exploring it in their lives. The thing that people learned the most on poetry was that actually to be a poet is to really just, is to have the vulnerability and bravery to express yourself in your authentic voice. That is not something that I could have perceived to be what people would feel by the end of that month, but it’s where the group got to. So suddenly you’ve got this whole group of people from all around the world that now see poets as brave people.
That’s a big deception to go from, I’m not sure if poetry is me for me, to be like, whoa, if only I had the bravery to be a poet. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That’s a big shift. And yeah, I think we’re still really early on with this as a framework and a practice, but I hope in future on bravery, we have the bravery to explore some bigger themes and themes that do really push the sort of understanding of the world around us. Well, yeah.
Oli: So ultimately that poetry example is very powerful because I’m kind of like that myself to be honest. Like I sometimes get a bit cynical about poetry.
I don’t know why, it’s just the thing that I picked up somewhere. But I know that’s just, it’s an unreal perception. Like what you’ve done, you’ve walked people through this process and now they see things a lot more clearly, a lot more of a real way actually, by digging deeper into it, they got out of their heads and they actually experienced something and it’s shown them the truth.
And that’s allowed them to understand themselves more and understand the rest of the world more, which is a beautiful thing in a way. I’ve just realized I’ve been talking as per usual longer than I planned to. But I think we covered all the things that we wanted to.
Have you got any final words or anything just to sum this up, to kind of bring it all together? And also can you tell people where they can find you and the Quest projects as well online?
Sam: Sure. Okay, final words.
Oli: No pressure.
Sam: Well, first of all, the Quest life really is the best life.
And it’s super easy to do. You know, earlier I said about how, although this project has developed from a, kind of a hobby type thing, I really don’t like the word hobby, it’s another thing for another day. But I’m gonna use it here because that’s what it felt like at the time.
It felt like a sort of a hobby project. Into a thing that other people all around the world sign up to and is growing into, you know, I think a really interesting creative business. Although it’s changed a lot in its format, it really is, its essence is the same. It is, the framework is so simple.
It’s so easy to bring into your life. It is not something that you need to like upturn your life for, you do not need to quit your job, you do not need to go traveling around the world. Like there are infinite ways to explore the world that already exists right in front of you. And if you’re feeling stuck creatively, emotionally, like professionally and whatever, in any way, the only way to unblock yourself is to, I think is to kind of like step into, switch the lenses that you see the world through a little bit, refresh your input.
It’s, give yourself a month and just think, okay, this month I’m gonna explore this thing that I’m curious about. Sit down for five minutes and make a list of all of the things you associate with that theme. And then start using that list to go, okay, well, how can I use this list as a set of starting points to explore this thing? Take the theme for walks, try and find the theme in the town, city that you live in. Use it as your theme, as your conversation partner, with the world around you for a month.
And it’s not something you need to quit your job to do. Adventure is an attitude. It does not involve, have to involve some distant land. It really can be about just exploring what’s right in front of you in a new way.
Oli: Wow, that’s really powerful because obviously ultimately what we’re talking about is getting closer to reality.
And reality is, it’s never gonna go anywhere. And there’s a lot of misconceptions, ultimately, like you’re saying people think they need to go traveling, they need to do something really massive, like climb Mount Everest or something to understand what life is all about.
But actually, if you’re more grateful and you just appreciate the power we all have to change our perceptions, there’s all kinds of little things we can do right now to kind of tap into this thing that you’re talking about. So yeah, that’s awesome. It’s very powerful. What’s your website as well, just so people know?
Sam: Oh yeah, of course, of course, of course. It’s Channel 12, which is all letters, channeltwelve.co.uk. And yeah, and on there, we have a quest page and then there’s a page of projects that we’ve created too. If you’re listening to this in a few months time, i.e. past probably April, May, 2023, we will have a new website, but that link will still work. You might just get redirected.
Oli: Brilliant. So I’ll share that in the show notes. But Sam, thank you so much for coming on and talking about all this stuff. It’s been awesome.
Sam: No worries, thanks so much for having me.
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