I spent much of my life believing I was terrible at maths, so I never tried to get good at it. Some people have the same feeling about whether they’re “creative”.
Often, the descriptor "a creative type" brings up images of tortured artists in berets, dramatically flinging paint at a canvas. But that's not how any of us start, is it? We begin fearlessly, just immersed in the act of creation. Just last night, my youngest borrowed his mum's phone to film himself dancing and spinning on the slippery kitchen floor. He's got the coordination of a gangly five-year-old, but the commitment of Baryshnikov in "White Nights." As far as he's concerned, he's a brilliant dancer. I tend to agree.
The thing is, we all used to be like that. But somewhere along the way, people started snuffing out that spark. Those of us who could've used a bit more practice, or who just did it for the fun of it, started getting told we can't draw, can't sing, can't dance. And so, we stopped trying. And that, my friends, is a crying shame.
But what if creativity isn't about churning out masterpieces for the MOCA? What if it's something far more fundamental, a primal force within us that fights against the insidious creep of "doom" and shows us the way to meaning in our lives? I recently had a chat with one of my favourite people in the world, Campbell Walker. He's a brilliant artist and YouTube sensation, and when he came on my podcast, his insights on this topic hit me like a tonne of bricks, in the best possible way.
The Opposite of Self-Destruction
Cam, a bloke who literally draws for a living, has a fascinating take on creativity: it's the opposite of self-destruction. Be aware, though, self-destruction doesn't have to be dramatic. Most of the time, it's far more subtle, even sneaky. It can be sitting on your couch, mindlessly scrolling through endless Instagram reels, consuming information that leaves you feeling lesser and lesser than bit by bit. Months of that on repeat, and something that started as a momentary way to numb boredom or escape discomfort has left you much worse off and no closer to a better life.
Cam calls it "gobstopper depression." It's not enough to completely derail you, but it's just annoying enough to make life feel like you're trying to eat a meat pie around a golf ball-sized gobstopper. You just kind of put up with it.
For Cam, this understanding hit home after a gut-wrenching experience: losing a mate to suicide. His friend's brother asked him to draw artwork for the funeral. Cam hadn't been drawing at all before that phone call, but in that moment, with real stakes and a deadline, he started creating again. He realised that tapping into that creative state, that "flow," felt like his friend was still there. It was a timeless feeling, a moment of connection beyond the relentless march of time.
Listen to the full podcast ep here
Tiny Happy Seeds in the Soul
This idea of creativity as a counter-force to despair, as a way to find meaning in loss, is profound. It's about taking the question "what could go wrong?" and flipping it to "what could go right?" It's about leaving a piece of yourself in the world, trading the time that's always ticking away for something tangible. As Cam beautifully put it, quoting Jeffrey Lewis, "Time is gonna take so much away, but there's a way that time can offer you a trade." That's creativity. You make stuff: babies, buildings, artworks, everything.
And it doesn't have to be some grand gesture. One of the things we talked about was how the solution to feeling stuck often lies in the basic stuff, the "unsexy" conventional wisdom that we rolled our eyes at as teenagers. Waking up on time, getting some decent exercise, not drinking yourself into oblivion. These are the foundational elements, the groundwork for the garden of your life.
The Garden of Your Mind: Weeding Out the BS
Cam's latest book is all about the metaphor of gardening, and I am so here for it. After all, gardening starts with the groundwork, not judging the outcome. You prepare the soil, plant the seeds, and whatever grows, grows at its own pace. You don't judge it if it's not fast enough; you simply acknowledge that you did everything up front as well as you could.
This hits home for me. My wife, Audrey, a woman with a serious green thumb, has taught me the love of gardening. And Costa, the host of Gardening Australia, has a cracking line: "There's no such thing as a weed. A weed is just a plant in the wrong place." Cam takes this further, describing "weeds" in our mental garden. Like the person posting on social media twenty times a day, loudly proclaiming their "awesome Epic CEO" status. From a distance, it looks like a lush garden, all green and successful. But get closer, and you realise they're just making gardening harder for themselves. They're not getting the real work done.
This applies to what we feed our brains. Cam, who built a huge Instagram brand, disengaged from it for eighteen months. Why? The compulsive unlocking of his phone, the endless scrolling through comments, the sugar packets of opinion. He felt a constant, needless conflict. He even suspects, and I agree, that much of the conflict online isn't even coming from humans, just bots hijacking your thoughts with "inane takes about absolutely nothing." Things that will never be relevant, designed to make you hit the wall, to feel not good enough.
Listen to the full podcast ep here
Re-Engaging with Intention
So, how do you re-engage with something like social media, or anything potentially harmful, and make it healthy? Cam reckons it's almost impossible to be truly "healthy" with it. He admits to getting easily fixated, and sometimes that fixation can turn into a compulsion he can't snap out of.
This is where it's handy to have strategies. Cam uses an app that removes all comments from his Instagram feed. It's about creating a space between stimulus and response. My own solution is a magnetic NFC brick I keep on my fridge. I tap my phone to it, and Instagram is locked until I tap it again. This simple interruption is enough to make me pause and ask: do I really need it, or should I go smell the flowers on the Melaleuca tree and watch the rainbow lorikeets enjoying their life?
Regardless of what we might think, we’re all creative. And at the end of the day, creativity is about building something, generating something, whether it's a physical object, a supportive relationship, or a healthy headspace. It's about focusing on the path you want to take, not the arguments going nowhere. It's about being deliberate in action, not frantic in reaction. It's about remembering that even in the darkest moments, there's more to come. And sometimes, the most radical act is to simply create.
Listen to the full podcast episode with Cam Walker now. Search Better Then Yesterday where ever you get your Podcasts.
While you’re at it, check out our new book, “So What? Now What?” out now.
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