Tag: inspiration

Working backward

March 24th, 2021

We all know what we want. Our main challenge is in getting there.

If we take our end-destination in mind and outline the steps to reach it by working backward, the goal suddenly becomes less intimidating.

The only way to “control” the future is to steady our mentality and take immediate action. Making progress requires both urgency and patience with the process. More often than not, this means persisting through failure by learning from our mistakes.

Greatness is scarce because so few people want to endure long periods of struggle.

Mastering each step of the craft fortifies the fundamentals and strengthens our “why.” Knowing our purpose helps push us through temporary and unforeseen hurdles.

There’s power and magic in practice. Only the indolent think they can perfect the work in theory — all talk, zero execution.

The art of pertinacity demands that we keep going because it’s the bravest thing we can do.

Get the pen and paper out. Feel compelled to identify what’s destiny and map out the road it takes to get there.
If you’re struggling to get started, do it badly

January 21st, 2021

“Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly,” advises the author Alain de Botton.

Perfection is the antithesis of inspiration — it prevents you from getting started.

The trick to getting going is to do it badly. To do that, one must be intentionally messy. The art of spontaneity asks you to start before you’re ready. Don’t over-think the process; intensify the habit of doing.

The emancipatory power in getting started helps jumpstart creativity.

Producing crap isn’t the end-goal. There is no quality without quantity — first, we get going, then we deduce.

“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.”
Margaret Atwood

The point of taking small actions is to create enough momentum to feel like we’re winning. You’re looking to go from one pushup a day to two the next week, four thousand steps a day to five-hundred.

You’ll need to write one-hundred words day after day before developing the muscle to consistently get down two-hundred words. By the way, there is no such thing as writer’s block!

Do small things to get started — no matter how poorly — to avoid second-guessing yourself and prime the motivational pump.
A panoply of tools

January 1st, 2021

What’s the primary device that unlocks your creativity — the camera, a pen, or the paintbrush?

These tools are our passport to freedom. So photographers speak through photos, writers communicate in text, cartoonists draw, etc.

“We become what we behold,” Marshall McLuhan said, “We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.”

Photo: Bill Robertson

Our vocation shapes our perspective and predetermines our output.

But we gather scraps of ideas everywhere; through unintended eavesdropping, mishearing things, and misread headlines. Artists are scavengers.

We combine divergent widgets in our toolshed to strengthen the entire arsenal. The writer makes draws; the architect paints with light; the musician scribes poems.

Using a variety of widgets helps work out different artistic muscles. As we draw analogies across subjects, we improve our core craft.

Said the Greek poet Archilochus: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

All the hedgehog knows how to do is protect itself with its spines. But the fox is more elastic — it can adapt to different conditions that enhance its chances to survive.

We permit our perspectives to shapeshift by opening the mind up to ubiquitous inspiration. Our imagination expands in so far as we stretch our palette.

First, we collect and understand. Then we deduce. Only then can we return to mastering our core competency.
Mind over matter, what’s the matter with your mind?

August 3rd, 2020

Sí, se puede. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Trying is a passport to freedom. You can do it, contrary to your negative internal dialogue. Mindset is everything. As is practice.

Showing up consistently matters, and reflects in the quality of the work.

Discipline equals freedom — now that’s a bumper sticker!

Guess, what? Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.

You’ve clamored all your life for excellence, only to realize that motivation was obstruction. There is no need to be certain.

Discomfort persists in your keyboard of consciousness, a type of continuous inward revolution.
Inspiration is a myth

January 28th, 2020

All the inspiration exists and is equally distributed.

But the ubiquity of motivational quotes and rags to riches biographies can be sheer fodder. Instead of doing the work, we get caught in the cycle of disattention.

The role of the artist is the create a reality for themselves. We can’t expect to copy and paste someone else’s experience as our own.

Inspirational quotes exist to help is reflect, rewind, and then compel us to push us along. Our mood board is a visual impetus, not an excuse to procrastinate.

The environment is continually changing, with a priori information overwriting the old ways of doing things.

We can always expect our path to be messy, but with the right mentality, our bodies and minds equally resilient.

Scouring the internet for a hit of motivational dopamine is only temporary. It’s the perspiration that has to be permanent.
Abraham Lincoln on writing

December 23rd, 2019

“Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind, through the eye— is the great invention of the world.”
Abraham Lincoln
‘We must be ignorant of what we are looking for…’

September 14th, 2019

“We must be ignorant of what we are looking for, or we would not go looking for it.”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (Amazon)
Confronting reality 👀

June 20th, 2019

Goal setting is like game setting. You start at level 1 and graduate into unforeseen directions.

If you’re lucky, you’ll ping-pong forward, making leaps and bounds.

But more often than not, declaring your ambitions acts as a compass, guiding you with mere suggestions on how to proceed.

Like a magnet, the lighthouse tugs you into its sphere of safety. It confronts the fog with luminosity and compels one, at least temporarily, to play it safe. Resistance celebrates your inaction.

Stubborn, you move on to ride the waves of uncertainty.

Fear is good quality control. And experience puts bones in the goose.

The same way an athlete strengthens their body through bicep curls or a monk jogs the brain through meditation, one can practice grit.

The intelligent machine evolves to beat a chess master after learning from its own failed iterations. Wrongs accumulate until they drive the resilient foot-dragging laggard into right.

Anticipation, fear of the future — what turns the foot-dragging laggard into a resilient hammer is the extra push. And then move into the direction that feels right.

Effort investigates the self and paves the road of life with a bunch of guesses. Fortunately, those assumptions appear to get more accurate with time.

3, 2, 1. Action!
Feeling like a failure

June 13th, 2019

There’s a reason why we always feel like a failure: We’re better off than ever.

With the Internet at our fingertips, it feels like we can all get ahead but mostly all we do is fritter time away in the cesspool of news. Even when we make something, it adds to the millions of other pieces of content everyone produces every day.

But there’s a difference between the artist and the creator. The former tries to find themselves in their work. The latter wants to find themselves through the acquisition of likes.

Remove the social currency and influencers are purposeless in the change they seek to make. A lack of clout fails to ignite their raison d’être. But a goal, a mission, drives the purposeful anticipation of a true creator.

The world keeps on spinning to the drumbeat of the maker, even if the well of confidence runs dry. Feeling needed is not the point for expression is the true release.

The only way to get ahead is to feel vulnerable.
The big picture view

June 9th, 2019

Everything is a work in progress. From your health to relationships, to making art, the finish line remains elusive because we’re always preserving the status quo or making things better. Even democracy is a work in progress.

En Media Res — That’s Latin for being in the middle of the action. If inertia is the enemy of action, then we can’t afford to sit the good life out.

What’s your modus operandi? What’re your criteria for a successful future? Is there an ethos you’re trying to build for yourself over the next few years?

To stay on track, you need to set goals. Not the ones that invoke jealousy, make you unhappy, enforce you to keep up with others. Chase goals that inspire a way of life, benefit those around you, help develop a sense of purpose, and inspire you to say hell yes despite the burn!

Live by choice, not by chance. Taking control allows one to stay connected to the big picture view. Hold on to your ideas and ideals on how the experience should be and never be afraid to see it through.
How to close the gap between near and far

April 26th, 2019

The basis for life is all interpretation, an internal chatter that either zaps positive momentum or dwells on negativity and drains the well.

For starters, your attitude should weave together what optimizes you rather than what conflicts with the experience of inner freedom. For example, instead of looking at your day job as a means of necessary survival, try to find how it bends toward your expectations.

You should never feel like you have to do anything. Rather, you should feel lucky enough that you get to do it.

Even more, have something to look forward to even if it’s an exaggerated goal. Moon shots will push you to find the right focus.

The law of magnetism attaches near and far more often than you think.
How to keep the good, going

March 4th, 2019

gif by @sherchle

What goes up must come down. Complacency eventually turns into panic. Once the stream of contentedness kicks in, progress stymies. The will to compete and improve wanes. Expectations which set the tone of achievement, fall at the wayside.

Motivation is a wonder drug. As Brian Eno said, “Everything good comes from enthusiasm.” The urge to improve and inject meaning onto the world protects against a mediocre existence. Once we feel inspired, the tendency is to do as much as we can for as long as we can.

To keep it going, we have to protect against two things: burnout and lost excitement. Overburdening the nervous system with the next-task is a precondition for indifference. If we want the care to go on, we require sanity checks like rest, disconnection, and breaking patterns.

Once the spirit dips and the automaton sets in, a recharge is mandatory. To prevent spinning out of control, we seek to re-energize by inciting alertness. Once we notice that was there was there all along, salient for human eyes, we realize we’re on the road to recovery.

“Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.”
Henry David Thoreau

The dip is a sign to move on, to start again before we’re ready. The thrill of beginning again and riding the wave of opportunity keeps the good going. Long-term accomplishment is never luck but the result of the flame of hard work.