#MondayMotivation: Each Day Brings a New Opportunity To Create Something
Each day brings a new opportunity to create something...
I just want to drop you a line and remind you about your creative opportunities. Every day brings a new opportunity to create something: a moment, a dance, a friendship, a blog post, a song, a project, a job, a work of art, a work of craft. You can do ANYTHING THAT MOMENT GIVES YOU! Just play around, and see what you can come up with, and follow your bliss!
Why the Creative Thinking of Your Childhood Is the Basis for All Real Learning
The following is a revamp of a blog I wrote a decade ago that strangely but propitiously fits in our current creative culture in America.
Elementary art teacher Ms. Escobal documents one child's moment of innovation with certain found objects.
“I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.” -Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground
Think back to your childhood. Did you play? Did you run around your house in your underpants pretending to be your favorite hero or heroin trying to save the world from an evil scientist? Did you ever build anything: a house of cards, a tower of crackers, maybe a simple fort? Did you ever play cop and fight imaginary villains and try to thwart a robbery? Maybe you were the one who pretended to have a family of five, a beachfront vacation home, and an office in the city. Even if you did none of these, back when you were six, nine, eleven years old, your mind wandered if your normal day-to-day got too boring.
Now contrast your play life with that of school. First, the adults made you go. There was no compromise, no voting and no writing to your local senator or the ACLU about how you feel your parents may have violated your constitutional right to stay home and eat Fudgie the Whale ice cream cake all day (or maybe, it was Count Chocula… whatever). You had to go to school. No amount of negotiating would change that. You rode your school bus, arrived at school, and soon thereafter would learn whatever the day had in store: spelling, grammar, math and history for which you had no point of reference. Flashcards were equally monotonous—you sat in your chair memorizing each card to the point your brain would just shut off and proceed to rattle off answers like a Pavlovian pup waiting to be rewarded with that peanut butter and jelly masterpiece your mother prepared while you were negotiating the Fudgie the Whale particulars.
Then, it was lunchtime! Lunch was great because you could always compare the other kids’ food with yours. Even if yours was crappy, the kid at the end of the table who ate crayons for money would devour your cafeteria meatloaf like a vulture on a deer carcass! Lunch was a time to talk about your favorite pastimes. Baseball was popular with the boys and for some unknown reason, fortune telling was the girls’ thing with little paper-folded demon machines which always said something like “You smell like pee and have a hairy butt!” Recess would follow and someone would always get maimed by a dodgeball or innocently and precociously chased by a member of the opposite sex (usually) and another kid would get inadvertently beaten with the double dutch ropes.
Next, you’d have more science work to do, memorizing ten categories of plant life or you’d learn how to type like a speed endurance champion, or maybe go to a gym class, art class, music class (These all varied depending on your school’s budget). But these were the times that seemed most free. In art class you could paint the sky purple and no one could tell you it was wrong. Music class had all those silly 1920s “flappertastic” classics that you by all accounts hated—but at least it didn’t have any long division or decimals! On the days you had gym, you ran in a circle for ten minutes and then perfected your volleyball serve to a tee while you gave your best Olympic-style grunt. Ah, those were the days, heh?
It is, without question, sadly prophetic that I should speak in the past tense about your and my collective school experience because right now as I speak to you, even in 2018, there are serious numbers of K-12 aged students who do not receive regular physical education—and art classes, while the highlight of many a child’s day are now a luxury. This is largely due to the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act which brought about stricter and more streamlined testing standards for schools nationwide that focus primarily on math and literacy skills. Kids are tested three times a year and thus have to spend a considerable amount of time preparing for tests. But the evidence suggests that without the arts and exercise, U.S. Children may be actually losing their ability to process, analyze and dissect information in ways that are essential for innovation in business, science, engineering, and medicine. Centers for Disease Control data has long suggested that children who get at least 60 minutes of physical play or exercise per day do better in all general aspects of learning and cognitive function (Read here). The arts have been shown to be even more paramount to healthy brain function. Playing music, for instance, requires vigorous processing on both sides of the brain (Read about music and the brain here.) while creative expressions in writing and visual arts require critical thinking and an ability to view the world and its problems in new and uncharted ways for the fact that art is not usually restricted to 2 + 2 = 4 (More here). This was probably best expressed in the words of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his existential classic Notes from the Underground when he opined, “I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.”
What No Child Left Behind (and rigorous core testing in general) robs from children’s education is the imagination of childhood and also fails to cultivate that all important physical instinct to run, jump, climb, push, and explore which physical exercise provides. Children have an uncanny and innate ability to conquer their world just by looking around it, exploring, digging, running or playing make-believe. It is just that simple. In this way, children who make art are the future architects and engineers. The most curious minds are often among those who cure diseases or build spaceships and the best actors are often the best undercover investigators on the face of the earth! Then there are the entertainers who make you and me smile at the end of a bad day, artists who allow us to look at our lives with newborn eyes, or athletes who make us realize that our human bodies have oh, so much untapped potential! It is, my friends, these elements which compose the human being in all his/her/their glory and you and I have known this ever since we first began to play. So I say to you: Play on, create, and imagine. Imagination is after all, your most sacred tool with which to discover the Universe of possibility which lies before you!
Expect to Succeed—Even If You Don't
Expect to succeed—even if you don't.
So often as a creative consultant, I'm asked what my advice is for basic success in anything and everything from creative project planning for your boss' all-inclusive, multi-cultural holiday party featuring a traditional Nigerian Christmas, to writing a confident letter to HR so that you can create your own job title as Director of Photography for the new website for that antique shop in Topeka. My answer is almost always the same: "See the success as if it's already there, and then, take that feeling, and let it fuel all the excitement and ideas it can!" Some ideas will be great and some horrendous, but the whole point is in the doing. In coaching and in cognitive behavioral therapy, this is often called "acting as if." It's a practice that primes the thinker to feel what it's like to be where he or she wants to be. More to this point, the science has shown that, very often, our emotions and biological systems can't tell much of a difference between the feelings of our imaginations and the arrival and actualizations of our goals. (Read a full text on how acting, and imagination create experience, empathy, and more here.) The more you do this, the more practiced and proficient you'll be come. Try it now. I'd like you to picture yourself in your ideal job. You're in a chair you like. You're talking with people you enjoy working with. Janet just had a great idea for that new project way before the deadline! You smile and feel excitement in your belly!
Now, look at the above scenario and notice how you feel when you're thinking about whatever relatable scenario you have for your own life: planning a trip with your partner, starting that new business you've been putting off. Take that exact thing, that exact wonderful feeling, and feel it as if it's right there in front of you! Notice how you can't stop smiling! Notice how many multitudes of ideas pop into your head! Notice how "in the zone" you feel or how going "with the flow" becomes your natural state. (Read more on flow psychology here.) You see yourself succeeding, getting that promotion you've known is coming, and that relationship you're picturing seems so good! You sit better. You stand better. You speak clearly. You're willing to take chances. Go right ahead! Try that new cardio salsa class; take that trip to Indonesia; write that book based on that epiphany you had in tenth grade. When you act from that joy and that right feeling, you don't rush from a place of fear and make rash leaps into a void of no return; rather, you act with a level head and being willing to fail a bunch and figure it out as you go. In this much, practice doesn't make perfect as much as it just makes learning and grows a belief that your goal is possible.
All successes start with an idea of what's possible. A thousand years ago, could anyone have predicted the iPhone? Think even farther back to the wonders of the ancient world. Could the rulers of the Egyptian dynasties—in all their belief in the bedazzling power of the Pyramids of Giza and the Egyptian people's unwavering confidence in the most advanced knowledge entrusted to the great Library of Alexandria—have conceived of some of the poorest people on our planet now having access to the ubiquitous LIBRARY OF EVERYTHING that we call Google? Nope. All these miracles or creativity first had to be imagined and believed possible by their inventors. It's the faith in what could be possible, (what psychologists refer to as growth mindset. Read here.) that creates ideas, technology, etc. It's this growth mindset that I really believe fosters a willingness to experiment and make mistakes that lead to eventual success. I can attest to this in my own work. Some of the best music mixes I've made have been by accident, and I sometimes write scripts and stories after a mishap like falling down in my kitchen while saving a chocolate cake from splattering onto my kitchen floor. This kind of "pro-mishappenstance" mentality is even more useful and even fun when one considers, that, to paraphrase Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert in her book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, art and the arts—on even the broadest of spectrums—are not, nor have they ever been fatal to a well-lived life. There are no botched surgeries caused by a smudged painting, no loss of life from a flubbed lyric at a Kanye West concert, and neither your health nor your finances will likely ever be compromised by your hatred for Salvador Dali's Mae West lips couch, (despite your mother's thinking to the contrary). Your creativity can afford mistakes.
Last, but never least, I want to leave you with the notion that you should find joy in the steps: the journey, the air you breathe, the path you travel. Life doesn't wait for you to be happy when it's over. Choose to be happy now! Choose to expect to be happy with all that life gives you. You will fail, and you will succeed. You may have to change plans and mix it up, but staying expectant of good things will make you enjoy and see all the good that is, and seeing this positive growth will most likely encourage exploration in you. You'll find yourself getting more done and being happier: happily failing and succeeding, and dreaming maybe a little bigger and a little more boldly each time. So, take chances, fall down, get up, make mistakes, innovate, invent, and reinvent—and expect to succeed even when you don't—and in the words of the late Joseph Campbell, follow your bliss!
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