Tag: Life Experiences

Did you no?

 

“Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.”

 

Yes, there is nothing half hearted about a no. It’s a complete answer by itself. That said, you are not closing the door on momentum or progress. When we offer a generous “no” to someone we care about, we honor our work and their role in it. We care enough to offer them insight about the change we seek to make–and to tell them the truth about what we can’t do at the same time that we’re celebrating what we can do.

 

We live in a world where saying ‘yes’ is rewarded by reinforcing social habits, whether in professional situations, sharing responsibilities at home, or even navigating intimate relationships.

 

When you say ‘Yes’ to others, make sure you are not saying ‘No’ to yourself- Paulo Coelho

Look at the Yes sorry X factor in saying no. The no of being mediocre, the no of getting away from doing something that degrades someone else’s self respect or dignity and possibility, the no of wanting to be mediocre and being in a race to the bottom..
Short changing yourself is easy..saying maybe when you should have said no, or saying yes when you should have said no.
Zig Ziglar had a great quote: “I need to be a meaningful specific, not a wandering generality.” It is about putting our neck on the line and standing up for what matters, rather than toeing the line and ending up saying yes just to please the person sitting in front of you. 
The most brilliant movies are just that not because of what you see but more for what you don’t. In a culture besieged by adding more, subtracting can be highly relevant and disintermediating and that begins with ‘ no ‘.
Saying yes to the life we all want will begin with knowing our no.
ENDS

Being an employee of our own myth!

We are all frauds! Forgive the blatant articulation.

 

To quote Wikipedia ” The master race (German: Herrenrasse) is a pseudoscientific concept in Nazi ideology in which the putative “Aryan race” is deemed the pinnacle of human racial hierarchy. Members were referred to as “Herrenmenschen” (“master humans”).

 

Creating is hard for every last one of us– including for the ones from the allegedly superior Aryan race.

 

If you think creating is hard, try grave digging. Or coal mining. Infinitely harder. Do you think miners stand around all day thinking and talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? Certainly not. They just go ahead and do it ie dig!

 

Throughout life, you collect data points or dots. And you probably don’t have a clue how these dots will connect in the future. As Steve Jobs said, you can only connect these dots looking backward. But, you can only collect them going forward.

 

In our daily lives, too many of us favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. The result is that our beliefs get brittle long before our bones.

 

Without the mistakes we make, the decisions we regret and the experiences that didn’t live up to our expectations, we would be very short on material for our creative work.  These things are all just ingredients for your soup, material for making meaning and making art.

 

The creative process, just like the creative life, isn’t linear.  We don’t know how each of our life experiences will impact us down the road. With each step forward, the view changes, the landscape shifts and the horizon offers a different dimension. The most insignificant of our experiences and life’s little skirmishes at the moment can serve as the most informative (and even inspiring) ones in our future.

 

Our creativity is not something that someone can give us, gift us or take away. It’s something thats always within us.  Whether it’s the degrees we earn or the jobs we hate, every experience offers us seeds to plant for the stories we tell.

 

Life doesn’t pause or stop to make room for our precious creating time. So, if you are running your own life’s employment exchange, show up and ship out!

 

ENDS