Rick Rubin: Your Whole Personality Is NOT True
In a Nutshell
Rick Rubin argues that authentic creativity comes from ignoring external validation and making work as a devotional act to your own vision rather than trying to please imagined audiences. The key is breaking free from echo chambers through environmental changes, movement, diverse social connections, and submerging deeply in your craft instead of chasing instant feedback. He emphasizes that greatness emerges when you focus solely on making the best thing you can today, without comparison to others or concern about reception.
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People want to be accepted, but the best way to be accepted is to be yourself rather than changing yourself to what someone else thinks. You don't really know what someone else thinks, and if you're not genuine to yourself, there's nothing there—it's just a projection or a mask. Authenticity has power even when working with artists who have very different worldviews, as supporting their vision completely allows their message to come across clearly.
The only way to learn anything is through seeing what's around us and learning there are different points of view. If we're all thinking the same thing, it's boring—why make anything if everyone thinks the same thing? What makes us interesting are the differences, and even the imperfections are what makes us human. This is different from AI like ChatGPT, as humans share their own experience warts and all. Hearing someone honestly talk about a human experience, even one we're not having, can make us cry, resonate with them, and give us a better understanding of the world.
The Japanese concept of three faces—one shown to the entire world, one shown to family and friends, and one shown to no one at all, maybe not even ourselves—relates to tapping into the essence of self where beauty, imagination, and creativity stem from. This personal essence is the most interesting and particular, as in a sea of information, the more personal something is, the more it stands out as yours.
When speaking to someone with a different view on anything, the approach is always to learn more—how did you get there, what can I learn from you—never assuming you know anything. When talking about creativity, the fear is addressed head-on because everyone has some fear, often expressed through statements like "I can't sing" or "I'm not creative, I'm more academic." These constructs present academic and creative as polar opposites, but creativity is something everyone can access and does access, even if not acknowledged.
Creative decisions happen every day: deciding to take a different route home because of traffic, cooking food and thinking it might taste better with an added ingredient, or doing anything that's not exactly the same as yesterday. The reason something is different is because a creative choice was made.
One big block to creativity is concerns about what other people think. Making something loved but changing it because you think others would like it more is problematic because we don't know what they would like—it's all in our head. If you like it, that's all the value; success comes when you say "I like this enough for other people to see it," not when other people like it. The only thing in your control is making the thing to the best of your ability.
Greatness and lasting, timeless quality come from making something as an offering to God rather than thinking about budgets or specific audience segments. When making an offering to God, you're not thinking about changing it for someone else because it can't be better than this devotional act of making the best you can out of love and devotion. This mirrors nature, where the sun selflessly serves and trees provide shade and fruit without expectation.
Even an offensive song can be devotional to someone. Working with Slayer, a controversial aggressive band, revealed that people who came to see them weren't filled with hate but came filled with love. For many in the audience, connecting over Slayer might be their only experience of love, and for people who seemed hopeless, having something they loved passionately was beautiful to witness.
The shortened feedback loop from social media and instant publishing can stifle creativity. In the past, bands could work in isolation for months before audiences heard anything, but today you can record something in seconds and get instant feedback. The beauty is that because so much is being made with instant feedback, choosing to make something not like that really stands out.
This book went against all publishing rules—it started eight years ago with meetings where publishers said it wasn't the book anybody wanted. Even when they agreed to go along with the vision, they were fantasizing a different book. The decision was made to wait until the book was written, then ask if they wanted to publish this specific book, not the book they thought should be written. When they read it, they said yes.
You can't control what the audience wants even if you played every perfect metric. There's an opposite ego trap to worrying about what people think—the belief that you can control everything perfectly to make something chart-topping, or that you're right and know everything. The goal is recognizing you don't know what other people are going to think, but you want to show them how you see it, and then see how they see it to make sense of the world.
It's not one story—we all have a story and something to say, and we can all learn from each other. The same set of chords is used in all songs, yet new songs keep coming. New jokes keep coming even though they're all the same but different. How we interpret things comes from our life experiences, which are different—we each have our own family origin story, places we grew up, things we saw. We could do the same thing together and get back and discuss completely different observations, and neither is right or wrong.
To break the sameness, change the context. A singer who doesn't connect with a song can create a new meaning or additional backstory to the lyrics. A love song might sound different if sung to a long-lost soulmate, a partner of 30 years you don't get along with, a person seen on the street but never spoken to, or your mother.
When recording "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" with Johnny Cash, he didn't feel the words until it was reframed as a devotional song to God rather than to a woman. When he changed it to singing to God, he was able to tap into the energy and feel the trueness in singing it. The song remained about a woman to listeners, but there's a long history of love songs that could be to a woman or devotional.
To create a performance of a different nature, change an element of the environment. Turning off the lights and playing in the dark creates a shift in consciousness and breaks the chain of sameness. Other shifts include having a singer hold the microphone instead of standing in front of it, recording early in the morning instead of at night, or having a vocalist hang upside down while singing.
For the Red Hot Chili Peppers' fifth album, previous albums were recorded in traditional studios with bad experiences. Instead of making it the fifth experience in the same environment, they changed the environment by renting a big house and recording in a mansion. This created an entirely different experience—some members didn't leave for six weeks or two months, staying, sleeping, eating, and working there until it was done.
When an artist thrives in front of a crowd, bringing in several people to watch a session changes how they act. Even one observer who isn't part of the project can be enough. Most artists tend to be more focused with someone else present. Even for non-performative art like writing or cooking, having an observer present will likely change the work. The goal is finding specific parameters that bring out your best.
When the Beatles were interviewed individually, they were thoughtful, interesting, soulful people, but when interviewed even two together, they became sarcastic and never said anything real, becoming more performative and focused on looking cool in front of each other. Being with each other changed the way they appeared in the world.
George Lucas, Spielberg, Tarantino, and others used to have a movie mastermind where they'd play their movies to each other before release. They felt confident showing competitors their movies without fear of idea theft because they were confident in who they were and their styles. A Tarantino movie versus a Spielberg movie has no similarities.
Most artists don't read any criticism or reviews of their work, good or bad. The ones who are strongest in who they are can even read terrible reviews and laugh at them. When someone gives criticism, it's telling you as much about who they are as what you've made. We make things through our filter and perspective, then others receive it through their filter and perspective—even if both like it, they probably don't like it the same way for the same reasons.
Metrics like the Oscars or Grammys, where one album is judged better than another, don't make sense because it's always apples and oranges. Drake's album is clearly a better Drake album than Beyoncé's album is, and Beyoncé's album is a much better Beyoncé album than Drake's album is, but the idea that one's better than the other makes no sense. If making personal things, you can't compare or compete with anyone else—the only honest competition is with yourself, asking if this is the best you can make today and if you've gone further than before.
Continuing to evolve and push artistically rather than getting complacent is essential, especially in success. It's easy to get complacent once something works and just keep doing more of that, but once three similar things happen, it stops being interesting. The feeling that there's already too much of something only applies if you're planning to repeat what's already been done—if you're not planning to repeat it, then you're one of one.
If you're not planning to repeat what others do, then you're one of one rather than one of millions. You're only bringing your own essence out. There are many interview podcasts, but they're all different because each person brings their unique perspective.
The most common challenges people face with creativity include distraction, overthinking, and procrastination. These words come up repeatedly in community feedback when asking people directly about their struggles.
Distraction and procrastination are related but different. Procrastination is not beneficial, while distraction can be helpful. You can hold a question to be solved, then go do something else like take a walk or swim, and find that the solution emerges through the change in context.
Living in the world provides external cues that can solve problems differently than sitting in a room looking at a laptop. When walking, external stimuli like noticing trees, birds, or weather create a different mental environment for problem-solving.
Rick Rubin lost significant weight by switching from lunch meetings to walking meetings in Santa Monica. The meetings became much more interesting and productive than restaurant or office meetings. The movement and external stimuli, even when unrelated to the meeting topic, changed the context and made conversations more engaging.
When walking, you're not looking at each other, making it easier to access your own thoughts. This differs from sitting across from someone with a table between you, which creates distance and positions people working against each other rather than facing the same direction.
Rick and his wife always sit "cheek to cheek" - next to each other rather than across from each other at dining tables. This principle applies to leadership and creative meetings, where positioning affects the collaborative dynamic.
Distraction can be healthy when holding a question or idea and allowing yourself to pick up a book, go for a walk, or engage in other activities while subconsciously working on the problem. Going for a drive is particularly effective because paying attention to not crashing occupies part of the brain on autopilot while ideas flow freely.
We've built up a negative relationship with the word "distraction," believing that if we don't solve something immediately while sitting in one place, we'll never figure it out. However, going on walks or engaging with other activities can lead to breakthroughs.
Having minimalist spaces with small artifacts and objects provides stimulation that triggers creative thinking. Observing nature outside can be equally valuable for creative flow.
An MIT study examined creative and innovative employees within corporate organizations. They identified two types: Employee A knew lots of people who all knew each other, while Employee B knew many people who had no connection to each other. Employee B proved more creative and innovative because they weren't trapped in closed circles and echo chambers.
When your circle includes random, disconnected people, you have more chance of original, authentic thoughts and ideas. Being surrounded by the same four people discussing the same topics limits creative potential.
"Submerge" describes the ability to deeply immerse yourself in something. In our hyper-connected world, we've lost this capacity because we're encouraged to "swim shallow." Great artists naturally submerge themselves due to their obsessive nature with their craft.
Great artists fall in love with something and want to know everything about it. Comedians demonstrate this through their commitment to performing every night possible, even through years of bad performances and rejection, driven by obsession with breaking through their own blocks.
Your purpose in life isn't necessarily related to your job. The job can support you financially while your waking hours are devoted to your purpose. It's beautiful when job and purpose align, but they don't have to be the same thing. Following your dreams shouldn't undermine your ability to support yourself.
Scarcity can ruin art, while the abundance of having a secure day job allows for artistic freedom. However, pain exists in creating art regardless of financial circumstances - the pain of performing and not receiving laughter is inherent to the creative process.
There's a mythology that people who make things we love are special geniuses on Mount Olympus, while the rest of us are ordinary. In reality, we're all just people doing our best, and sometimes we find ways to make something beautiful. There are no special people - we're all special.
Rick Rubin journals his dreams and recommends keeping pen and paper next to your bed. When you wake up, don't move at all because dreams are chemical reactions in the brain. Grab the pen and start writing immediately, moving as little as possible. Even if you only remember fragments, writing triggers more dream recall.
Start writing the part you remember, and more of the dream will appear through the writing process. With practice, you get better at remembering dreams. Dreams may appear abstract and nonsensical at first, but reviewing them later reveals patterns and subconscious messages that weren't obvious when experiencing them.
Don't do things just because you think you're going to get something for it. Follow what's interesting without worrying about the outcome. The act of observing and being present with dreams has inherent value beyond potential future insights.
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