Courageously Creative

Be more creative in your own way

Old Fashion Summer is a #Phonelesssummer #Screenlesssummer

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Old Fashioned Summer

The Beatles, Albert Einstein, plus Thomas Edison all didn’t have a certain habit during dinner? These people of achievement, and I’ll include Alexander Graham Bell, didn’t interrupt their meals by looking at their smart phones.

Having the world’s store of information and people at our fingertips could increase our creativity if used mindfully, but often it’s not. Remember when waiting for a bus or in a checkout line meant a time to think or to start a conversation. Now with a free minute we’re out of pocket and starring at our screen – as if we’re a emergency room astronaut in the middle of a critical merger and acquisition of a hostile nation that is demanding our urgent attention.

Our phones are just the beginning of artificial intelligence. With the possibility of so much promise, AI also sadly brings a massive outsourcing of our mental processes from our large brains to our tiny devices – putting our creativity and our future at risk. Let’s take a stand this summer to take back our minds.

I used to wonder why so many people were looking at telephones – endlessly waiting for a ring? Then, I got a smart phone and joined the crowd. Getting news alerts, ignoring friends, checking weather, trouble falling asleep, scanning stocks, and never having enough time. I resisted games but became occupied with the endless feeds of twitter. Freeing me to work from anywhere but finding myself at work everywhere. Tightening acquaintances across the globe but loosening local ties.

Creativity thrives through our curiosity; however, the curious are the ones most susceptible to loss. Instant answers rob us from pondering too deeply about things like whether Pluto should be considered a planet and takes away our will to dream about a future with cordless toasters.

Not enough time is the reason many give as the barrier to creativity.

Smartphones are like sponges absorbing every last drop of our downtime by continuously pushing us today’s equivalent of Gilligan’s Island.

The more we repeat something like checking our phones, the more it becomes a habit that’s hard to break. Like eating peanut M&Ms and knowing that each tiny glance adds unnecessary weight doesn’t make it any easier to stop.
We have cravings, feel hunger pains, and start to rationalize that if we don’t check our phone, a worse version of our worse case scenario will occur.

Be part of the solution by honoring other peoples right to peace afterhours. Take your finger off the send button unless it’s an emergency – and then call someone who can actually help. Set some limits you can live with. Not anything too impossibly dangerous like stepping out of your home to get the newspaper without your phone fully charged and turned on. Try carving out Internet free zones in your life – and summer is the perfect opportunity.

What does an “old fashion summer” mean to you? Boring stuff like stretches of unstructured time for dreaming up ideas, reflecting, developing real friendships, experiencing nature, listening to music, playing sports and sunburn. We used to debate whether to answer the telephone during dinner and now we’re on 24/7.

Technology gives us tools to communicate and become more productive in every aspect of our lives, in every room in our house. AI promises to take on more of our mundane tasks. While this could free more of our time, this dividend of freedom is being squandered. What we need to hold onto are the parts that allow us to be creative and make us human.

Set some limits on your technology. Leave your phone behind, before we get left behind. Give our children a technology free summer and give ourselves a vacation back to a time when we could dream.

What will you do this summer?

Step Lively

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Staten Island Ferry

Staten Island Ferry

Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges

Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges

Leaving our homes, crossing bridges or stepping onto a ferry, and we’re transported to another shore. Likewise, at times we must leave the world of creating to the somewhat distant land of displaying what we have made.

Sharing and promoting our work takes resources away from creating, however, the internet offers access to tailored audiences and makes viewing and ordering comfortable for our patrons.

Step lively onto the ferry is what I was recently thinking when leaving the shores of creating and launching my artwork online for sale at SAATCHI ART.

I’ll periodically make original paintings and affordable prints available. My artwork has international themes with the aim of connecting shapes to show beauty. I’m starting with a series from New York City including the Staten Island Ferry and the bridges that I’ve traveled many times. Please take a look and tell your friends who may be looking to fill a blank space on the wall.

Temptation Calling

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“This is temptation calling,” is a friend’s way of roping me from work and persuading me to joining him for some boating. Even though it’s not either of our nature to abandon responsibility, on a beautiful workday, we’ll reprioritize our routines and find ourselves the only folks on the water. Pleasant distractions (like blog posts?) help us all to relax, defocus, open our perspective and bring fresh answers upon returning to work.

But even pleasant distractions aren’t always welcome. During some special moments, we find ourselves in the zone with ideas flying like sparks at a pace so quick they can’t all be caught. You may have experienced when your thoughts arrived like a sudden downpour or as flashes of light. We don’t know from what cloud they came and without knowing the steps to a rain dance, we fear that any distraction will bring drought and our hit song, prize winning poem, billion dollar business plan, or masterpiece painting – will be lost.

While deep in our flow, distractions can feel like attacks. Old fashioned defenses such as taking our telephone off the hook, or placing a do not disturb sign on the door will no longer stop our army of digital screens. Our increasingly louder, 24/7 hyper-connected world alerts us – like it or not – each time a butterfly bumps into a lilac and injures its wing.

After my son was born, interruptions became frequent and thoughts were lost down the drain with the bathwater. Then, another dad gave me some surprising advice that made all the difference and it’s something I’d like to share. He suggested welcoming all interruptions, especially at the early stages of our creative process. Since we generate more ideas than we can possibly follow up on, it takes considerable effort to record, sort, select and do. Instead our interruptions become a natural filter. The distractions cause our bad ideas to be forgotten while the great ones like air bubble always float back to the surface.

REVIVAL: BREAKING THE ICE again

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UNFROZEN

It wasn’t my idea to get back on the ice,
But I did my best and learned something nice.
In the back of the closet, found old skates hiding,
Fitted them over double socks for proper sizing.

Pulled up the laces, tugged and tied,
Fully expecting to take a graceful slide.
Instead, the lake wasn’t only frozen, so were my skills.
Which became evident from anyone watching and seeing my spills.
Wobbling, skidding, ankles bending, have I declined?
This looked nothing like the promo that played in my mind.

With each glide, the blood started to flow
Having some warmth my confidence started to grow
After the thaw, gone was my fright
With one of my left feet becoming right.

What skills do you want to thaw? We can somehow find the time, space, plus resources but an obstacle we don’t always think about is fear we won’t be any good. Be confident that when starting up again, we will be terrible. So don’t let that stand in your way, rough starts are perfectly natural and to be expected. With a little warming up, our skills quickly thaw and we again begin to flow.

Is there something that you used to enjoy that you’d like to revive? Do your best, expect a few spills, and start something new today by trying something old!

GETTING NOTICED: Your Pluto Problem

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NASA Image

NASA Image

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll be somehow shuttling from a team picture and dive meet, rushing to a marshal arts test, and attending a rock concert – all slotted at the same time. On my epicenter of an overscheduled summer, there is something else far off that is immediate and worth noticing.

Having left Earth 9 years ago and traveling an inconceivable 3 billion miles, the New Horizon on July 14th makes its closest approach to Pluto and for the first time lets us get a close look at the fringes of our solar system via NASA TV.

Pluto Day is a testament that curiosity, creativity, and long range planning can co-exist. It marks a great achievement for mankind and provides us a glimpse of what the origin of the universe was like. But is Pluto on your radar screen and are you going to watch?

Pluto has had a rocky time. In the same year of New Horizon’s launch, by the vote of a small number of astronomers, Pluto controversially lost its status along with all its rights and privileges of a full planet. Tiny Pluto, named for an underworld god has an unsightly mess of objects in its orbit and apparently isn’t very unique. We can only hope the chemists don’t exclude little Hydrogen from the periodic table and the cartographers don’t re-labeled the Artic Ocean as a mere sea.

Right away, our phones will stream with pictures of Pluto posing with Charon its largest moon and best friend, but the real data will take some sorting out and this doesn’t play well with the instant media we come to expect. And unfortunately for Pluto, while we’re rushing around through our daily demands, things like testing for a Taekwondo belt becomes more relevant to us than examining the Kuiper belt. Poor Pluto, a bit of an underdog and as seemingly remote from us as a lazy summer day, while won’t be a moon landing moment, it will matter to some of us. And it’s the sum of us that matters.

So the question is: Do you have a Pluto problem? Have you been keeping your mysteries to yourself? Have you been working on something creative for a long time and producing sometime incredible but feeling like a tiny speck standing 3 billion miles away?

If a great achievement such as the mission to Pluto is receiving little attention, how can we get noticed for what we create right here on earth?

While the enthusiasts will watch NASA TV, there are other channels competing for attention. If we forget about reaching the universe and instead consistently create our best work, we can find our own channels and reach the people who our work will matter most. Happy Pluto Day!

What’s your Pluto Problem?

An Introverts SCREAMING Disadvantage

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Are you showing your best hand?

Are you showing your best hand?

When we succeed at doing something creative, like writing a book, getting a painting accepted into an art show, inventing something that in some small way makes the world a better place – in our Extraverted world, we’re unfortunately rewarded with something that many people don’t want. A spotlight is cast upon us and we’re asked to make a public speech. This prize is enough of a demotivator that some people have said: they are discouraged away from even trying to do anything creative.

Why do some people love the attention of speaking and others prefer to be listeners? The difference between Introversion and Extraversion is simply that Introverted persons tend to mostly prefer alone time for reflecting to charge their energy while Extraverted persons instead mostly recharge by being around others and engaging their world.

But, comfort with public speaking is about something else entirely – it’s about practice. By their very nature, Introverts tend to get less practice speaking so they often don’t give themselves the opportunity to develop the skills of a typical Extravert – who tends to have more practice engaging with people. With practice, public speaking is something that everyone can succeed at and even enjoy. Public speaking isn’t the critical problem for introverts but something else is.

There is one overarching disadvantage of being an Introvert that many don’t realize – and knowing what it is can help when it matters. I briefly write about this in CREATIVE YOU and now realize more needs to be said. We all have a dominant function that relates to our greatest strength. While Extraverted people tend to lead with their strengths, the disadvantage that Introverts face is that they often conceal their strongest function. Introverts frequently keep the richness of their inner world to themselves and a trusted few, and instead, what they share is their second strongest function.

Sometimes using your second best is ok, but in our hyper-competitive world, it certainly puts us at a self-inflicted disadvantage. To understand, we don’t need a technical discussion about our cognitive functions here because I think you can imagine playing a poker game where an Introverted person lays out a second best hand in front of an Extravert who shows only the best cards. What if we didn’t send our very best athletes to the Olympics but instead sent the folks who just missed in the trials. For Introverts, it’s the lead played by our understudy night-after-night while the star is able and watching from the dressing room. It’s the Introverts nature to hold back their best and if you tend to do this, its not only a supreme competitive disadvantage for yourself, it does a disservice to those who depend on you to bringing your A-game.

For Extraverts, by fostering an environment of trust, you gain trust from your Introverted colleagues and they are more likely to share their richness of thought. And Introverts, to be appreciated, respected and to better contribute –

sometimes its not enough to know, you have to show what you know.

By simply curving a line to become an ocean wave you are sharing what’s important – you don’t have to share the depths but at least share enough near the surface for others to know what you are about.

Being creativity can takes quiet contemplation and sharing your best ideas has risk plus takes courage. When it matters – set out your finest china and fill your crystal glasses to serve your best ideas – good things will happen.