Picasso painted with passion, Mozart composed with it. A child plays with it all day long.*
Steven Pressfield

You may wonder where
your passion went;
It is close by, waiting
for you to come out to play.

*Steven Pressfield’s Do the Work.

“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
    says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
    Everything is meaningless.”*

The Teacher begins gloomily but
goes on to show
how we are
meaning-making machines.

*Ecclesiastes 1:1

Pursue clarity instead.
In the pursuit of clarity, style reveals itself.
Your clarity will differ from everyone else’s without your intention to
make it differ.*
Verlyn Klinkenborg

Sorting and choosing. One is more important than the other … getting the piles right is the hard part … We need to spend less time choosing and more time sorting.**
Seth Godin

When we gain clarity, everything else
follows –
Name your talents,
Notice your energies,
Identify your values,
Weave these into your myth or story, and
you will know what to do next;
It’s important to make our choices with
the right things before us –
It may take longer, but we’ll
be thankful for this in the long run.

Writing is not for sprinters, but for long-distance runners. All creativity takes discipline … Write in a genre you love … The Story should be your kind of story.^

*Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing;
**Seth Godin’s blog: Sorting and choosing;
^Robert McKee‘s newsletter: You Must Write What You Love; as in, writing out our stories and myths.

Happy, smart, and useful.*
Derek Sivers

Three words to sum up what you hope for your life?

Derek Sivers’ reminded me of my three words –
a response to the question:
What does it mean to you to be human?

Creativity, generosity, and enjoyment: to create stuff,
To give this to others, and this to provide
a life with joy.

I’ve just calculated that I’ve had these words for
sixteen or seventeen years, and they
still sum it up for me, though I’m stilly trying to embody them better.

Back to your three words?

*Derek Sivers’ Hell Yeah or No.

Not everything blooms in spring. Your season might be autumn. Keep going.**
James Clear

I think you may well find that
the best is yet to come;
I have a sense that life becomes stronger and
fuller with the years, and this
for the good of others and your own
deep gladness.**

*James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter: On how to handle idiots, pushing toward growth, and two types of choices in life;
**This is why I offer dreamwhispering.

The real voyage of discovery consists not of seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.*
Marcel Proust

The more control you have over your attention, the more control you have over your future … What you trade your attention for is what your life becomes.**
James Clear

There are many ways to have new eyes for
seeing differently what is right in front of us –
We can have slow eyes, compassionate eyes, kind eyes, curious eyes – perhaps
the list grows as we see more – but
here are three to begin with: what would it mean to see more
humbly
gratefully
faithfully?^

*Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
**James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter: On making the most of what you have, how to make a convincing argument, and embracing danger;
^Of course, physical sight is only one element of having new eyes.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.*
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Research shows that a person’s past does not drive or dictate their actions and behaviours. Rather we are pulled forward by our future.**
Ben Hardy

Here are life-dispositions humans are capable of choosing:
We can explore existence as a spiritual being, and,
We can recce the future rather than dredge the past –
The two interconnect, for as we reflect on what we are capable of being –
Loving, joyful, peaceable, patient, kind, gentle … –
We fuel our imaginations for what this may look like
in the future of tomorrow or next month or a year from now,
And then,
We draw these into today, finding
small ways, at first, to embody them for
someone, somewhere.

*Jean Houston’s The Wizard of Us;
**Ben Hardy’s Be Your Future Self Now.

Good stories give birth to many different meanings, generating “children” of meaning in their own image.*
Dan McAdams

Meaning transforms something literal into something figurative. When you connect to something meaningful, you get perspective and purpose, but you don’t get control.**
Katherine Morgan Schafler

Meaning turns that into this: the path becomes
a journey, a problem presents as
a challenge, an author and their book provides
a guide, this pain proffers
a teacher – when we understand our lives are
stories, we realise how we can rewrite or overwrite these palimpsestically –
Imagination playing with reality – creating something
new and alive; a poor story claims
there is no meaning, a not so good story
acts as a time-capsule to meaning, but a good story is
a baby-meaning mamma.

*Dan McAdams’ The Stories We Live By;
**Katherine Morgan Schafler’s The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control.

Leaving the work to find its own place in the world is the mark of a good workman, a good workwoman … Out of what is hidden we make the visible and then call it work; work that makes sense of the hours we are privileged to live.*
David Whyte

Watch the stars in their courses and imagine yourself running with them.**
Marcus Aurelius

Here are two questions that will last a lifetime:
Who is my True Self?
What is my work (contribution)?

Our best work will find the people who need it, and
will last our lifetimes – it may not be
the work we are paid for, though it may be.

The work we love, making what we see
visible to others, may be a small thing in such a vast universe, but it also
provides us with a journey greater than ourselves.

What is your work?

*David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea;
**Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic.

Culture defeats tactics every time, which is why strategy is often about creating culture.*
Seth Godin

The holloways are humbling, for they are landmarks that speak of habit rather than suddenness. Trodden by innumerable feet, cut by innumerable wheels, they are records of journeys to market, to worship, to sea. Like creases in the hand, or the wear on the stone sill of a doorstep or stair, they are the consequences of tradition, of repeated action.**
Robert Macfarlane

You are the smallest expression of human culture,
Shaped over many years, decades of conscious or unconscious
development – your holloway** resists the change you now seek, the
tactics and techniques you employ; but
perhaps there is a deeper holloway to discover and travel,
One shaped by your talents and energies and values, fashioned
from the inside out: your delightful
culture, story, myth, that allows us to:
wake up each day in a world of wonders
rather than a world of answers.^

*Seth Godin’s This Is Strategy;
**Robert Macfarlane’s The Wild Places; ‘Holloway: from the Anglo-Saxon hola weg, meaning a “harrowed path,” a “sunken road.”‘;
^Brian McLarens’ Faith After Doubt.