How To Find Calm In Creative Storms: Radim Malinic (Transcript)

Read the full transcript of author and designer Radim Malinic’s talk titled “How To Find Calm In Creative Storms”, at TEDxFrankfurt, Feb 24, 2025.

Listen to the audio version here:

The Wipeout That Changed Everything

Radim Malinic: About a decade ago I was on a flight from London Heathrow to Denpasar in Bali. I was awake for 24 hours, 17 hours in the skies. I was wide awake, giddy and excited. I was on a mission to pursue the biggest waves of my life so far.

I should have done what every sensible person would do when they get to the other side and that’s to go and rest. Not me. I went straight to the hotel, dropped off my bags and I rushed to the beach. There it was. The beautiful Indonesian ocean with the biggest wave I’ve ever seen. And I was standing there with the equally big smile, feeling like a child on a Christmas day, when they see the Christmas lights for the first time.

Of course I wasted no time. I hired a surfboard and I jumped right in into the beautiful shimmering turquoise ocean. And as I’m paddling out to catch my first wave, I’m pretty much hoping that the first two words that I would expel would be, “oh yeah.” Except I don’t even have time to say “oh shit.”

I misjudge my takeoff and the wave behind me wipes me out. In a split second, I’m underwater. I’m tumbling. I don’t know which way is up. I’m in no control of the situation. It begins to feel I have to hold my breath for longer than ever before. And I remember to count seconds in my head to stop myself from panicking.

As I’m here to tell you the story, I managed to get back up and get some oxygen back in my lungs.

Holding onto my board like a shipwreck survivor, I’m going to slowly walk back out onto the beach. I’m tired. I’m confused. I’m bewildered. And looking back at the ocean, I feel like a fool compared to the people who are still there having a good time surfing. It makes me believe that my expectations and my skills were nowhere near the match for the situation right now.

The Perfect Analogy for Creativity

The reason why I’m telling you this story, because I think it’s a perfect analogy for creativity. For having creative life, having a creative career, running a creative business. For taking on things that are far too big for us, yet so irresistible. For taking on challenges and not always winning.

I believe creativity can be also summed up with a quote by Jon Kabat-Zinn who says, “You can’t control the waves, but you can learn how to surf.” I believe you can’t control creativity, but you can learn how to use it.

So today, I would like to talk about creativity and the life lessons from creativity learned from over the 20 years of being a designer, author, and eternally creative.

A Nonlinear Path to Creativity

My path into creativity is somewhat nonlinear. I didn’t wake up on my fourth birthday with a crayon in hand and say, “Mother, I’ll be an illustrator for the rest of my life.” Let’s be honest, if I did that, I’ll be a stand-up comedian today.

Instead, as a young boy growing up in Czech Republic, I decided to join a local ice hockey team before I could skate. As an early teenager, I wanted to start a band before I had an instrument or knew how to play one. And later, in my later teenage years, I stepped up to the DJ decks in a room of this size to play a DJ set, but I never played a DJ set before.

ALSO READ: The Transformative Power of Classical Music: Benjamin Zander (Transcript)

All of these have got one thing in common. It’s about a “now versus how,” about taking on something bigger and making it into something long-term. And it was the same way how I got into creativity.

It was my love for music. I hopped on a flight from Czech Republic to London to go record shopping, and I was totally mesmerized by the surroundings. I didn’t know this would be a one-way trip because the surrounding, the UK scene, the club culture, music, magazine, graphic design, everything. I was on an eternal holiday, and I was so charmed by my surrounding that it made me believe that I could be part of it all.

My First Creative Job and Reality Check

So, one day, I walked up to the local high street, and there was a print shop advertising job for a graphic designer. I walked in, asked for an interview. That interview wasn’t extensive, nor it was thorough, because I managed to get that job. I was, what I lacked in experience, I made up in excitement and enthusiasm because I had my first job title.

Do you remember how you felt with your first job title, with your first job? Because I do. I felt like a superhero. I was full of ambitions. My expectations were sky high, and I thought I could save the world with my creativity, except I got to meet my Lex Luthor, my kryptonite, in no time. Clients, changes, amends, feedback, deadlines.

I was like, I thought creativity was this calm lake with no ripples and a beautiful sunset in the background. Instead, we got choppy waves, stormy oceans, and a wipeout. I’m like, I thought creativity was fun until the client shows up. I was naive, shall I say. I was naive. I wanted to be in control. I didn’t want to let go, and that was my issue. In fact, I wanted to control the process, and you might say, I wanted to control the waves.

Learning to Let Go and Build Resilience

So I had to let go. I had to change and start using creativity as an eternal lesson in growing resilient. I had to start asking, I had to listen and understand everything before any of my actions. I had to observe my role in the room and just sit back and take it all in. I had to start asking questions, better questions, relentless questions. So much so that I had to understand the flow of creative process and where I slot in.

Because after 20 years of doing this, I now believe that creativity isn’t fun until the client shows up, because we need them. Because resilience is an imperative of a 21st century existence, not just creative one.

We’ve got more freedom, more opportunities, more choices, more tools, more technology, and all of it is wrapped up in this hyper-connected world, sat in our pockets, ready at our fingertips. When we engage in this endless scroll, it makes us invent false narratives, success competitions, ambitious anxiety, because seeing the world through the little squares makes people appear just a bit more talented, successful, or attractive. But are they?

ALSO READ: The Potential of Science for Social Impact: Hayat Sindi at TEDxCERN (Transcript)

Embracing Your Uniqueness

We need to embrace our uniqueness. Our greatest asset is something we hardly ever do, because how often do you remind yourself of uniqueness? How often do you have even time to think about it?

Yet in my case, for years, I used to live in that dissonance. I was on a mission for personal, creative, professional acceptance, yet I wasn’t accepting myself for who I was or who I could be. I wanted my work to be excellent and fly and shine, yet I wanted to hide behind it, almost be invisible, to blend in. I didn’t particularly embrace who I was, the six foot tall one, the one with a different accent, the one who celebrates what makes me, me.

This time I had to listen to myself and find the true expression of my soul, to observe my role in every room and why I definitely belong in that room. I had to ask myself questions that would lead me on my creative path. So I needed to understand the flow of my creativity and my uniqueness and how to dial it up, because I still fall off my surfboard and I can still feel like a fool, but not for long.

Because accepting myself for who I am and who I could be makes any feelings of competition and comparison fall away almost immediately. It was the life of creativity that have told me that it’s an eternal lesson in self-acceptance. When we celebrate our uniqueness, we give ourselves an extra layer in our foundation. We can stop looking sideways, we can keep looking forward and start creating optimal conditions for creativity, deep focus and deep work.

Creating Chaos Instead of Calm

But how often do we create anything bad? We act the opposite way. We create chaos, hard plans and overwhelm. And when we get overwhelmed, what do we do? We blame everything and everyone for our overwhelm. We need to come to realization what do we do and how we think about it.

So start asking ourselves questions like, how are you? Are you okay? Are you sleeping okay? No. Are you eating okay? No. Are you exercising? No, I’ll start tomorrow. How’s your social life? Neglected. How’s your bank balance? Work in progress. Do you follow politics? Maybe you shouldn’t. Did you make a plan? No. So when I come to these realizations, these questions and answers, I realize that there’s only one way to exclaim and that’s to say, “Dear creativity, it’s not you, it’s me. I’m the reason we’re not working out right now.” Because not being able to focus on the task in hand makes us invent more false narratives like preempting feedback, inventing bad outcomes, not even enjoying the process like starting to doubt the final outcome before we even start.

And after 20 years of working in creative industry, I don’t think there’s such thing as creative block. There’s just too many unguarded thoughts that trip us up when we least expect it.

The Nervous Flyer Lesson

Let me give you an example. And I think you’re back in the skies for a minute because once, despite being an adventurous flyer now, I used to be a nervous flyer in my earlier years. But on a return flight from somewhere having far too much fun, see the hashtag fragile, I became hyper-focused on this noise of the plane, of the engines. I was sat on the wing and every nuance in the change made me feel a bit dread. I’ve convinced myself, we’re going down, definitely going down. Every tilt filled me with horror.

ALSO READ: Life Happens Outside The Comfort Zone: Anne Even (Transcript)

I told that story to a friend of mine the next day and he simply says, “Next time when you feel like that on the next flight, just look around you and find someone who looks like they fly every week. Because when they lose their shit, you lose yours. Until then, you’re fine.”

Not only this advice has changed the way I travel these days, but it’s also changed the way I create, corroborate and live.

Learning to Observe the Present Moment

Just like I can be mindful of my creative ideal conditions, I can understand, I can learn and understand how to observe my mind in the present moment. So this time, I need to listen and tune into the right signals. I need to observe the situation and find clarity of that moment. I can ask for help and not struggle in silence and be liberated by saying, “I’m not okay.” And I can understand the flow of my positive and negative thoughts because they don’t hang around for too long.

Because it’s been a life of creativity, there’s been my life lesson and self-acceptance because I want to enjoy it. I don’t want to be making myself believe that we’re going down.

Embracing the Wipeouts

So when we look back at the ways they just wiped us out, sometimes we realize that it’s maybe too much too soon. But we know we’ll be back and try again, if not tomorrow, the day after. Because we can make a better plan. We can step back. We can embrace our uniqueness. We can accept our space in the world. We can be more resilient and lower our expectations.

And remember that there was somewhere in that ocean that was a perfect wave size for me, just like it was there for anybody else. But I have no regrets. All of these knocks and bruises will be neat because the personal, professional, creative wipeouts, they remind us that we can be not on our toes. Because if everything was easy, we wouldn’t really bother, right? If we could control the waves, would we ever learn to surf? Maybe not.

Your Perfect Wave Awaits

So I urge you to take out your surfboard, paddle out, and it doesn’t matter what kind of wave you ride in today because there’ll be a perfect wave just there for you. Enjoy it. Own it. Stick with it. Because miracles happen on any size wave.