Two world views, but which is yours?

Those who go with a scarcity worldview believe there’s not enough to go around: only some are special, you have to look after number one.  They’ve probably swallowed this error from somewhere and someone else (give people permission to give up their scarcity worldview and see what happens).  In a world of scarcity you need lots of people who aren’t special, (our systems appear to reinforce this error, including education systems which are set up to identify and stream the best of what schools and colleges include).

But what if Humans are set up for abundance, for abundant creativity – not only the ones who measure up in our schools and present-day businesses?

(Interlude: What are you going to do on the first sunny weekend of the Spring?)

What did you think about – what did you imagine?

You have just imagined something which doesn’t exist yet.  This is an astonishing ability we exercise hundreds and thousands of times a day.  Your ability to imagine is evidence that you have what is necessary for creativity.  I don’t mean the way someone else is, but the way you are.

Yesterday, I was meeting with a couple of people imagining the content of an event we’re working on together.  Amazed by the things they were picturing and combining, I came away wondering, What if everyone gets to be  as excitedly imaginative as these two, awakened to the life only they can live?

This is what I am intent on imagining and pursuing; what do you imagine?

Responsibility.

It’s important to do what you’ve been entrusted with – the normal way of thinking about responsibility.

It’s more important for you to identify what you must do and do it – a sharper definition of responsibility.

Break down the word responsibility and it’s about having the ability to respond.

The first definition helps you to respond when something or someone needs your help – a friend, a situation, work.

The second definition means you get up every day ready to do that thing you do with courage, generosity, and wisdom, and not to do it hurts – in relationships, work, leisure, interests.

Courage, because true humility has allowed you to be more who you really are in an uber-connected way: with others, the world, and your future.  Generosity, because gratitude has made it possible to see you have everything you need right now to begin.  And, wisdom, because your faithfulness in daily practicing your talents and being grateful in everything you do and every relationship, means you’re living wisdom – nothing wasted.

Maybe this is resilient living – able to be who we are in every moment and situation. or, maybe its more, what Nassim Taleb has named antifragility – the ability to flourish in difficult places and situations.*  (Flourish is another way of saying passionately create your art.)

Of course, it’s easier to make others responsible for creativity – partners, employers, teachers, best friends, politicians, God.

And, yes, clearly, there’s the possibility of failure.

And the possibility of the best of futures.

(*I’m not suggesting stupidly dangerous ways and places where we’d get squished rather than flourish – the things which are akin to walking in front of a moving bus.)

E is for experimenting.

The way by which Humans shape their future.

When you consider the ways in which Human talents and passions come together, the resources they have, and the ways and means they invent to experiment and express (habits, practices, and behaviours), you may conclude Humans are by essence, future-shapers.

Future, though isn’t the F word.

Right at this moment, in different places around the world, there are people who are shaping your future, your children’s future, and your children’s children’s future.  They know the future is not fixed, and, for good or ill, they are grabbing their opportunity make some kind of difference.

If we’re awake to how we’re all capable of shaping the future – through our art in small ways or in larger ways – then we can begin experimenting, proto-trying our thoughts and ideas and dreams in the laboratory for research each day offers: whether it be someone we help or we give extra at work or peruse and pursue an idea or bake a cake for someone or offer a kind word with someone or … (you know where this is going).

Here’s the F word.

Failure.

When we experiment we fail faster, which also means we learn faster and cleverer.

I know we’ve been brought up that to fail is not an option.  Wrong.  Not to try is not an option.

Maybe it started with education.  You failed or passed an assignment, then an exam, then you failed to get the grades you you needed.  Many education systems appear to set us up to fail, whilst failing to recognise they could all be figuring out how to connect education with how to make life better on earth: taking on the challenges of poverty, crime, and human rights, or energy conservation, space exploration, and genetic technologies, or cancer, AIDs, and Parkinsons.

The good news is, we live in a world where we get another opportunity, because the barriers to education and expression are breaking down.  E and F are waiting to be added to our daily alphabets.

Full?

Empty?

How would you finish the sentence?

Suzanne Segerstrom suggests seeing the glass as full or empty has more implications than we perceive on the surface.

Half-full and you’re more likely to push ahead.

Half-empty and you’re more likely to quit.

One opens up possibilities, the other blocks possibilities.

In Yes Man, Jim Carrey plays ace-blocker Carl, coerced by a number of personal circumstances and relationships into saying Yes to every proposition which comes his way (though he later finds out he had more choice than that).  Although a funny look at optimism and pessimism, there’s perhaps a serious point in this dynamic of saying Yes leading to more good things happening for Carl, and having fun along the way.

I’ve been exploring how concepts of humility and gratitude might lead to the things Humans most seek: autonomy, mastery, and a greater purpose than themselves.  So is Carl’s experience replicable in real life?  Can all of us become more positive?

In the conversations which make up my work, I meet wonderful people able to do amazing things.  I’m not just saying this, nor do I see them being someone they are not – only more who they are.  It seems, sometimes, people are using something positive in a negative way, or trying to be someone else, when life is only asking that they be creative, enjoying, and generous with who they are.

Half full?

Half empty?

What now?

The third question is the most important one.

Are two different things.

Businessman Mark Johnston is suing a Las Vegas casino after losing half a million dollars whilst drunk – the casino kept plying him with free drinks, allegedly.

An interesting news-story on the radio this morning, as I happened to be reading some Dan Ariely, who has studied the effects of something FREE! on people:

‘Zero is not just another discount.  Zero is a different place.
The difference between two cents and one cent is small.  But
the difference between one cent and zero is huge.’

If so, then then there’s both an upside and downside to FREE!  The upside is, offer something good for people free, like health screening, and people will be far more likely to accept, over against a reduced rate for this of, say, five pounds.

The downside is, people are blinded by FREE!, making decisions not in their best interest.

All of which made me wonder.  Maybe not everything that is easy in life is the bargain we think it is – effort-FREE! or pain-FREE! – and we need to stop and take a closer look.  It might well be the difficult and more costly choice offers the freedom we seek, the thing we really want.

That’s the downside, but the upside of easy may be how, when we’re living closely to our talents and passions, and an idea for what to do next comes to mind easily and effortlessly, then the next step might well be the one we must take.

It’s worth taking a closer look.

To stay where you are.

We like the idea of doing something more with our lives.  We like the idea of somehow being creative.  We might identify what this might possibly be.

What will be your next step towards this?

And what will the thing be that you do tomorrow towards this?  (And if you read this early enough in the day: what will you do today to make this happen?)

Creativity has just become more difficult.

How come?

Too risky?
Maybe not sure where to begin?
Perhaps fear of the unknown?
Or maybe something will have to be given up?
Then, the cost may be too high?

Really, without taking a step, we don’t know if any of these things will prove to have any substance.  The thing you do know for certain is, if you stay where you are, doing the thins you do, nothing will change.  This may sound risk-free, but it’s the riskiest place to be:

“All around you, people will be tiptoeing through life,
just to arrive at death safely.  But dear children, do not
tiptoe.  Run, hop, skip, or dance, just don’t tiptoe.”
(College professor to his class)

Another reason it’s risky is because we’re living in a world of increasing possibilities, where our learning and experiences are changing in ways we couldn’t have imagined thirty years ago.  Who wouldn’t want to be part of this?

A few places to begin:

Order the book that’ll help you figure out what you must do: here’s one for starters

Join a local group who meet to enjoy together the thing you’re interested in.

If there isn’t one, start one: meetup.com is one, here’s another (all you need to begin is one other person).

Find or help build a new kind of library, one in which the librarian is “a data hound, a guide, a sherpa, and a teacher … the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user.”*  (I’m part of a group wondering how we build such a library.)

Or something else which fills your imagination.

Dance, skip, run, or hop – up to you.

(*Seth Godin shares a wonderful picture of what the library of the future will look like: “The next library is a place, still. A place where people come together to do co-working and to coordinate and invent projects worth working on together. … The next library is a house for the librarian with the guts to invite kids in to teach them how to get better grades while doing less grunt work. And to teach them how to use a soldering iron or take apart something with no user-serviceable parts inside. And even to challenge them to teach classes on their passions, merely because it’s fun. … The next library is filled with so many Web terminals that there’s always at least one empty. And the people who run this library don’t view the combination of access to data and connections to peers as a sidelight—it’s the entire point.  Wouldn’t you want to live and work and pay taxes in a town that had a library like that?)

Yesterday was a day full of value.

In a meeting of Creative Edinburgh* in the morning, I had three conversations focusing on value one after the other.

A photographer found himself underpaid for one of his pictures which appeared on the front cover of one of yesterday’s national broadsheet.  It was a wonderful image which was worth far more than the price the paper paid.  Interesting: this picture was worth different amounts depending on where it appeared in a paper, its size, and whether it would be reproduced in colour or black and white.

Then another conversation with a designer of mats and cards and T-towels and more – I’ve just been on her website and it’s very attractive produce.  Our conversation focused on the question of how much do you charge for the things you design and make?

A thought was forming, which I’ll share in a moment.

I then had a third conversation with another photographer who was sharing how customers struggled to value his work, like not understanding how turning up for two hours at a wedding can cost as much as it does – the tip of the iceberg phenomenon.

Later in the day, I was meeting with someone describing his exploratory ways for lecturing in university, creating a learning environment for all, including himself.  An exciting conversation as we’re both passionate for producing creative people – he didn’t want to simply train students to pass an exam.  By this level of education this can be the driving factor, so were the students and university authorities valuing this new approach?

My thought formed some more.

Only you know the true value of what it is you do.

Whilst you need feedback, you cannot trust your “customer” to know what the value is or to set the “price”**  – you may produce the most amazing food but if someone is just looking to have a quick snack, they will not value your art, or pay you what it’s worth.

There’s another dynamic at work here: you must recognise as valuable the thing you do – which may be anything from a unique product you make to a wonderfully generous outlook on the world which you express in the ways you treat everyone you meet.

I can’t emphasise how important it is to know what your art is and to value it.  If you don’t, you may make a tradeoff which disadvantages you in life – trading the valuable thing you do at a low cost for something which is not valuable, but has a high cost.

One last word: you don’t have to look for something crazily different to everything or everyone else.  When you know what your art is, and you value it, whatever comes to mind is an expression of your uniqueness: ‘An artist who is inspired is being obvious‘ (Keith Johnstone).

(* A not-for-profit supporting creative industry businesses and individuals in Edinburgh.)

(** I’m not talking about being extortionate.)

Alfred Taberer was a printer of the old order: setting type by hand and working even in his 70s and beyond

On the front of the publication he produced for the organisation I was part of, it stated “Ten New Pence”.  It was 1983, decimalisation had been with us for twelve years – Decimal Day, 15th February. 1971.*

I had to smile.  I’m old enough to remember pounds, shillings, and pence.  That’s not ten new pence – it’s two shillings (2/-), and I would convert this new money backwards to find its true value!  (When you had to squeeze twelve pennies into five new pennies, and twenty shillings into a pound comprising 100 pennies rather than 240, many of us suspected someone was growing rich on the converting-up!)

I don’t do it very much now, but for many years, for smaller items, I’d do the backwards conversion.

It’s an example of an “anchor,” the result of arbitrary coherence, and these can have long-lasting effects.  (Perhaps it’s led to Frugal being my middle name!)

To know this is to have freedom.  To question why you do the things you do, why you buy this and not that, why you like this person but not that person, breaks the anchor chain, making it possible to meet new people, do new things, make choices which will transform your life.

And the most important word in all of this is the word question.

(Alfred never learnt to drive, but was transported by his sister in their Austin Metro.  In 1984 it became law to wear a seatbelt in the front of a car in the UK – Alfred refused and sat in the back.  In 1991 it became mandatory to wear seat belts in the rear – Alfred had been got.  My memories of Alfred and his sister Phyllis are fond ones.)

First of all, anchors.

I’ve found myself wondering about how much the first source I read or come across on a subject fixes my thinking on it – an anchor.  If I find I don’t really like what I’m reading or finding out about, then perhaps this isn’t my first exposure and I’m comparing to something else.  Who?  What?

Dan Ariely tells me this is “arbitrary coherence,” something Humans do as they seek to find lines of reference and patterns.  The arbitrary part might be an idea, a price, a starting point, which provides the anchor I need.  The coherence part is how I make sense of everything else in relation to this.

Of course, if the starting point isn’t a good or accurate one, I’ve got a problem.

Then, observations.

Perhaps an antidote to arbitrariness.  To really see things accurately is key to what I want to do with my life.  To notice the details, gain more information, and then to internalise them, mixing them with my skills and passions, will make it possible for me to express them through my art in a way that serves and contributes to another.

Of course, this is difficult.

To hold to the anchor makes life more straightforward and simpler; to let go is to be all at sea.  But “all at sea” is where the world is most of the time; your willingness to be anchor-free may be part of tackling the problems.  Which makes you something of a rarity in the world.  There are lots of anchor-people but not many let-go people.

No thanks to more.

James Hong, founder of hotornot.com sold his Porsche Boxster and bought a Toyota Prius.

His thinking?

“I don’t want to live the life of a Boxster,because when you get a Boxster you wish you had a 911, and you know what people who have 911s wish they had?  They wish they had a Ferrari.”

What Hong was doing was breaking the cycle of relativity, the thing which often lies behind us wanting more.

I don’t own a Boxster, and you may not have a car at all, but the thing about the cycle of relativity is it’s relative, so you and I will somehow experience it, unless we’ve broken the cycle.*

But I also want to say that it’s good to be hungry for more.**

Yes pleas, to more.

To have certain hungers or cravings is to be Human; it’s about recognising them for what they are, then we can meet them in a more fulfilling way.  The thing is, a 911 over a Boxster over a Ferrari won’t give the degree of pleasure we want – that’s why it keeps scaling up, whatever the starting point for us.

What Humans want is to be free to choose, to master something, and to live for a cause bigger than themselves.  When these things comes together in that thing you do, then something is going to happen.

The subtitle of the excellent Domino Project book End Malaria says it well: Bold Innovation, Limitless Generosity, and the Opportunity to Save a Life.

Be hungry.

(*I’m exploring how three words hold the key to freedom to choose and to do amazing things with our lives – humility, gratitude, and faithfulness.  When it comes to breaking the cycle of relativity, humility helps me focus more on who I am and how I can improve this (my future Self), rather than trying to appear more powerful, more knowledgable, or wealthier than others; gratitude helps me to really see just how much I have already and begin to figure out how to share it with others.)

(**One company of people had Magi!s (More) as a motto for their lives: to give everything they could and then to give more.)