CROSS YOUR DISCIPLINES: THINK BETTER AND HEALTHIER

Recently, London’s Guardian published a fascinating article outlining research that shows magicians have a lower mental health risk. And I thought we magicians were crazy. Who knew?

In my recent book, Creating Business Magic, we focused on translating the lessons of the world’s greatest magicians to business. Well, why not? There is astounding synergistic power in crossing disciplines. Above all else, it forces you to channel a change leader’s curiosity—and too, apparently, studying magic and applying it to business is good for your mental health!

Years ago, I worked with Walter Isaacson on several projects. There is no better biographer writing today. He connects a key thread between his biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, and Steve Jobs. All of his subjects display, he says, “almost childlike curiosities.” Franklin crossed science with statesmanship to fuel brilliant innovating. Einstein, stuck on an equation, picked up his violin to play Mozart and thereby found his way out of the problem by reconnecting with the universe. Da Vinci borrowed from his work on anatomical drawings, including the dissection of lips, while struggling some fourteen years to paint the world’s most famous smile on the face in history’s most famous painting.

And as for Steve Jobs—our first corporate client back in the 1980s—the Apple founder and second-act turnaround CEO borrowed continually from his early visits to Japan, his study of calligraphy, and memories of a rebellious youth. On June 12, 2005, delivering one of history’s most watched and re-watched commencement addresses, knowing he was very sick, Jobs offered one big piece of advice for the Stanford graduates who leaned in, listening for the future meaning of their lives.

Jobs recalled for his audience his youthful memories of the Whole Earth Catalog, a bible for his generation, assembled by Steward Brand using typewriter, scissors, and a Polaroid camera. The iconic catalog was about to cease publication when Jobs was 22, the same age as the Stanford students he was addressing. And Jobs talked that day about how he absorbed the headline from the final issue, printed beneath a photograph of an early morning country road, a road along which any twenty-two-year-old like Jobs might hitchhike. It said: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

Jobs tells the graduates: “And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you: Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

The change leaders of our generation and the next must stay hungry and foolish. They must cross their disciplines. And they must study arts such as magic and continually think outside of the box—like magicians.

Doing so will help all of us think and lead change better—and, the new research shows, it will also help us stay mentally and spiritually healthier.