Don’t begin the day without
your story.

The revelation of plenitude calls for a revelation of mind.*
Lewis Hyde

Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind.**
Marcus Aurelius

It is our character that transforms our thinking about
talents and abilities from being
ways of getting things to becoming
ways of giving things.

*Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World;
**Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic.

Every hero has an origin story.*
Todd Hermann

Dorothy has now found her inner strength and her voice … In the Hero’s Journey, this is known as Apotheosis, when the hero’s limited self dies and is transformed into a new being of light, divine knowledge, love, and compassion.**
Jean Houston

By the grace of God,
I am from error and
pain and
experiment and
failure and
awkwardness and
rejection and
ignorance and
foolishness and
quandary and
hope and
curiosity and
reading and
listening and
slowness and
loving and
passion and
joy.

Now ask me where
I am going.

*Todd Hermann’s The Alter Ego Effect;
**Jean Houston’s The Wizard of Us.

Workshop mess. That’s one of the major highlights of the workshop. Come try things, make things, get dirty, give it a shot. It’s not a beauty contest, it’s not on display and it doesn’t have to work. It’s a workshop. It’s a mess. The mess isn’t a necessary evil…it’s a FEATURE.*
Gabe Anderson,

A journey is called that because you cannot know what you will discover on the journey, what you will do with what you find, or what you find will do to you.**
James Baldwin

Workshops are great places for trying things out, whether
we call them studios, studies, offices, class rooms, laboratories, sheds, workspaces, factories …
They are already full of ideas, materials, tools, failed experiments to reuse;
We like them because we are walking workshops, creative-spaces on legs crammed with
experiences, memories, successes, failures, dreams, ideas, talents, values, and energy –
When we see our lives and our spaces in this way,
We can never be stuck.

There’s a temptation to do nothing simply because there’s so much to do that one doesn’t know where to begin. Begin anywhere.^

*Gabe Anderson’s blog: Workshop Mess;
**Adam Kahane’s Everyday Habits For Transforming Systems.
^John Cage, from Adam Kahane’s Everyday Habits For Transforming Systems.

The greater the tension, the greater is the potential.*
Carl Jung

My greatest challenge is balancing patience and impatience, because I’m 100 percent of both.**
Roseanne Haggerty

Impatience with what is,
Including ourselves, is important, is
aliveness, but this work is going to take a while,
Perhaps a lifetime or more, so we had
better figure out how to be impatient and
patient, persevering and
resting.

*Lisa Cron’s Story or Die;
**Adam Kahane’s Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems.

Work harder at making the familiar strange. Walk or drive a different route than your daily routine; work away from your desk; read something flamboyantly irrelevant; call someone you don’t need to call; look up at the sky instead of the concrete. When you turn back to your routine, it will feel freshened.*
Jason Zweig

The natural state of the mind is often for it to bounce gently around, usually remaining only loosely focused and receptive to new stimuli, the state sometimes known as ‘open awareness,’ which neuroscientific research has shown is associated with incubating creativity.**
Oliver Burkeman

We often find ourselves acting as if good work is keeping
our foot to the pedal of concentration, but
the best work often arrives through playing within the rhythm
of focusing and unfocusing, concentrating and relaxing, fast and slow –
Each of these requires different kinds of effort, and perhaps
we find the unfocused and relaxed and slow the hardest.

*Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing newsletter: Hi, Resolution;
**Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations For Mortals.

Say “I don’t know” at least 10 times a day. That will disqualify you for a career in politics but make you a better person.*
Jason Zweig

We become prisoners of our paradigms. Stepping outside the walls, however, permits a new vantage point. We don’t have new information, we have a new perspective.**
Matthew Syed

One way to see differently and
understand more is to
ask another what they see and
deeply listen to their reply.

*Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing newsletter: Hi, Resolution;
**Matthew Syed’s Rebel Ideas.

For years I have taught that we steal because we do not believe we can create.*
Erwin McManus

Studies have shown that negative self-talk, doubt, and disparagement go quiet when we’re engaged in creative work.**
Todd Herman

There isn’t a list,
You get to invent your own creativeness – you don’t have to
copy someone else, you can be
the first you –
For sure, there are broad categories of creativity, but the more
you try out the things that matter to you, the more
bespoke will be your originality and artistry;
The only thing I’d ask you to promise yourself? –
To leave the world better than you found it.

*Erwin McManus’ The Genius of Jesus;
**Todd Herman’s The Alter Ego Effect.

In the Extraordinary world, your “orientation” has been set to “positive.”*
Todd Herman

The extraordinary world** is the place we enter as
our alter ego – think Beyonce’s
Sasha Fierce, Superman’s
Clark Kent,^ your
?;
It’s the essential you comprising
talents, energies, and values, making it possible
for you to overcome obstacles and
embody these powers for others in the ordinary world.

*Todd Herman’s The Alter Ego Effect;
**The extraordinary world sounds very much like the special world of the Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, a place where we discover our powers, returning to the ordinary world in a new way.
^Todd Herman suggests Clark Kent is the alter ego of Superman, helping him to connect with humans.