Environment is among the most powerful and important personality levers. If you’re serious about changing yourself and your life, you must change your environment.*
(Ben Hardy)

Show me the hidden things, the creatures of my dreams, the storehouse of forgotten memories and hurts. Take me down to the spring of my life, and tell me my nature and my name.** 
(George Appleton)

We are not only an innovating species, we are also being innovated.

Certainly across the span of history but, thankfully, across the span of a lifetime.

To polish our outside is an easier thing to do, mind, but to innovate who we are inside is more beneficial.

*From Benjamin Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
**George Appleton, quoted in the Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer.

Also read:
Matt Ridley’s How Innovation Works;
Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds;
Bernadette Jiwa’s What Great Storytellers Know;
Erwin Mcmanus’ The Barbarian Way;
Ella Frances Sanders’ Lost in Translation.

You’ve strategically designed your environment to remind you of your future. Remembering doesn’t only need to be about your past.*
(Ben Hardy)

[I]t is essential to put yourself in the unconditional service of the future possibility that is wanting to emerge. Viewed from this angle, presenting is about a dialogue with the future possibility that wants to emerge.**
(Otto Scharmer)

Here are three things we’ll need to nurture in order to create the environment for our emerging future:

To open our mind to more: books, people, ideas, nature. More , more, more.

To open our hearts so we might notice far more than our minds alone are able to.

To open our wills and try and explore and experiment as people of activeness rather than passiveness.

To have each of these these in all of our days is a very special thing, is to be blessed.

*From Benjamin Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
**From Otto Scharmer’s Theory U.

I must know that I am, at least in part, the very thing I am seeking.*
(Richard Rohr)

We become original through practise.**
(Seth Godin)

I liked the way these thoughts played together.

What we need are the right kinds of environment for our original practise.

*From Richard Rohr’s Eager to Love;
**From Seth Godin’s blog: Two kinds of practice.

Discovering the right medium is often a tidal moment in the creative life of an individual.*
(Ken Robinson)

AMEN!

*From Sir Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds.

the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty*
(John Muir)

It was John Muir who wrote,

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.*

When we have found our thread of beauty it will take us on quite a journey if we are open ourselves to the places and people it leads us to.

*John Muir, quoted in Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: The Universe as an Infinite Storm of Beauty.

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to male an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we begin from.*
(T. S. Eliot)

Before getting stuck with the thought that the years leading up to this moment have been wasted or have brought you to a blank end, take a little time to notice where you are.

Identify your talents, articulate your values and notice what you’re energised by … and not.

You may just find that you’ve accomplished quite a lot providing yourself with a new place to begin.

*T. S. Eliot, quoted in Benjamin Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent.

It’s true that how we spend our days is how we end up spending our lives. We can deliberately choose to spend them wisely.*
(Bernadette Jiwa)

Just a When it comes to the main thing, I need to ask:

Am I sharing my heart and spirit in this?

(*From Bernadette Jiwa’s The Story of Telling blog: Always, Sometimes, Never.)

Thank you to all followers and subscribers of thin|silence, including those who have recently subscribed.

I just wanted to let you know it means a lot to me that you are part of this challenge to blog and doodle every day about the things that catch my attention.

It began as a challenge for a year back in 2014, but I find I just can’t stop.

Never mind who you are. Search for the person you aspire to be.*
(Robert Brault)

One way in which aspiration can feel different to inspiration, is how it provides a path to walk each day, and while we’re walking rather than waiting, inspiration may join us.

*Robert Brault, quoted in Benjamin Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent.

I is a dream-blowing giant.*
(The BFG)

The bigger your future the better your present.**
(Dan Sullivan)

As regular as clockwork, the sun rises and sets, encompassing another day.

We may sometimes take it for granted, saying, There’s always another day.

But a day is an extraordinary phenomenon in the universe, holding more than a few surprises for us, and providing many moments for dreaming.

There are plenty of practical things to be done, many ordinary tasks to be performed, but, as you feel the day’s breadth and length, its height and depth, may you also dream, and then believe your dream into being.

Dreams enable us to open a future we may never have otherwise know was possible.

Just a little stillness, gazing, silence, reading, listening can help.

*The Big Friendly Giant, from Roald Dahl’s The BFG;
**Dan Sullivan, quoted in Benjamin Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent.