As opposed to life in outer space.

Contact, starring Jodie Foster is about life in outer space.  Her character as a child asks her father “Dad, do you there’s people on other planets?”  He replies, “I don’t know, Sparks.  But I guess I’d say, if it is just us … seems like an awful waste of space.”

Is there life out there?

Humans are fascinated by the possibility of intelligent life being found somewhere in outer space and what kind of life it will be – just look at the movie industry (Contact is sitting amongst my favourite films too).

Whilst this great quest continues, there’s one greater that touches everyone’s life.  This odyssey is not into outer space but into inner space in search of the vibrancy of life to be found in every Human.

The most complex thing we know of in the universe is the Human brain, with its intriguing desire to create the future as it opens to the world and to others and the future Self.

Every day, we get up to the possibility of this quest, of engaging with expansive creativity to do what we love and love what we do: your path with a heart.

Do you know if you have found the path?  Here’s a question to help, from Mitch Joel: ‘So who do you think the future belongs to?  Those who can’t wait for Monday or those who are dreading it?’

Here are three we can debunk at the beginning of the 21st Century:

Only a few people are creative
Creativity is a solo occupation
Creativity is finding answers

Last night I was part of an event full of creative people which underlined the following three – performers and audience alike.  Let the debunking begin:

Only a few people are creative: This one is debunked because everyone is creative.  We increasingly know creativity manifests itself in many different ways, including your way.  Some creativity is obvious –  and some can can be devalued, missed, or dismissed.  No more.  The measure of creativity is found more in the energy experienced by someone doing the thing they love and which makes them curious, productive, and contributing to others – even if it’s to one person.

Creativity is a solo occupation: This is a myth  because, in the age of connectedness, you’re not left in isolation, and we know creativity is something best honed through interaction with others.  Last night’s performance of music and dance came together in only 6 weeks – from finding people, writing the script, rehearsing, to the performance.  Increasingly, creativity is about what people can do together.  You may sometimes work alone, but innovation comes through connecting with others who bring their creativity to the party.

Creativity is finding answers: This one is debunked because creativity is really about asking questions.  Find an answer and you stop looking.  Keep asking questions and find many.  Last night musicians asked, where can we go with this music and the dancers asked where they could take this idea in movement.  What if there were more people, more time, more space, what could be done then?  Asking questions means we are open and listening: listening to the world and to one another and to your future Self.

Creativity is creativity only because it is never at rest, it is always moving.

Because others haven’t been on the journey you’ve been on, they struggle to understand what you’re doing, and more, why you’re doing it.

You’ve had an idea, faced down the challenges, overcome the problems, failed (and failed and failed again), picked yourself up, regrouped, innovated, embraced your idea again – with excitement, persevered, delivered.

Others haven’t done this.

Are you crazy?  Yes.  Are you weird?  Yes.  Are you “what!“?  Yes.

Your instincts are right.  The world needs your crazy, weird, what! kind of stuff.  What you know is there’s something inside driving you on more powerfully than anything outside could.  Crazy, Weird, and What! are the new norms.  Resist “standard.”

The following words – well known from the Apple ad – are for you.

HERE’S TO THE CRAZY ONES.
Here’s to the Crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They invent. They imagine.  They heal.
They explore. They create.  They inspire.
They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas
and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people.
While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can
change the world are the ones who do.

(If you’ve got this far, just to let you know, I’m here for you.)

Are you the same person you were 50 years ago.  How about 30 or 10?

What about yesterday?

What about tomorrow?  And how about ten years from now?

One of the facts of being Human is we change.  We just can’t help it.  I can never know you completely.  You can never know yourself completely.  It sounds weird, but you have a capacity to grow and develop that we don’t know the limits of yet.   May never.

You’re not the same person you were ten years ago.  Okay, you’ve got all these memories that suggest you are, but you’re in a totally different place now, and who you are today makes it possible to become someone else.

Where do you want to go?

Listen to your life.

What are your dreams?  What energises you?  Which of the world’s injustices grieves and angers you most? What are the repeating themes from your life?  These are some of the things which matter most of all?

Some folk have researched things like these in people’s lives and they’ve discovered they lead to vitality, dedication, and transcendence – all of which are change-makers.

A friend was sharing with me yesterday how she’s entered for a half-marathon in March.  This is more than double her present personal best distance of six miles, but I know now, she can do it.  What is required is step-by-step practice.  In the parlance of spontaneity and originality I used a couple of days ago, this is about Faithfulness.

Who are you going to be tomorrow?

Because the emerging future is going to feel counterintuitive. because it’s looking strongly like we’re going to have to move from safe to unsafe.

Or, at least, that’s how it feels.  But safe has moved – like the Land Rover Evoque owner who’ll return to their car today to find it missing.  Maybe a big car and big bank account meant you could park on a yellow line once upon a time but not this morning.  This car was being hoisted onto a truck with its alarm going off as  I ran by.

There was a time when you could ignore what you’re really passionate about and get by in life, but not any longer.  There was a time when you could fit in, go unnoticed, and everything would be okay until you retired, but even those who’ve been loyal and productive over the long haul are vulnerable.  Traditional industries are dying out or moving somewhere else and working patterns are changing – will the future see increasing numbers of people working parallel jobs?  We’re still getting to grips with the extra time technology provides us with, or, contrarily, how it makes us work harder.

The good news is, there has never been a better time to pursue your art – that is, the work of your life – paid or unpaid or a mix (there are many ways).

Maybe this is a Matrix moment for you.  It’s messy and scary and uncertain, but the most dangerous place may prove to be where you are right now.  We are most vulnerable and weak when we try to live in a 21st century world within a 20th century matrix.

We move from answers to questions, from comfort to discomfort, from arriving to journeying because the new safe is somewhere else.

Words of recommendation on the cover of Keith Johnstone’s Impro, from a Daily Telegraph journalist, catching my eye this morning.

Whatever you value and produce, I’m guessing it’ll be better for more spontaneity and originality.

The improvising actor or comedian practices more.  It doesn’t sound right, does it?

It’s the hours of hard work and practice in the background which makes all the difference when it comes to improvisation on stage.

It got me thinking about three practices or exercises which can lead to greater spontaneity and originality in life.  They may seem strange places to begin, but bear with me.

The first is Humility: we know who we are, what we can do, where we can make a difference; we are increasing in awareness as we develop skills and  grow passions – impro exercises include, finding out more about our passions and talents from all the resources we can lay our hands on, including talking to and learning from others who exhibit similar and complementary talents, and looking to play with these things daily.

When you do, you are opening up choice because you are connecting with your world, with others and with your future Self.

Then there’s Gratitude: to be aware of all the resources you have in your life, from the basics – shelter, food, modest finances – to the more sophisticated: education, circle of relationships, curiosity in particular things which set your pulse racing.

When you do, you are opening up choice because you know you can begin with because you have so much.

Thirdly, there’s Faithfulness: fulfilling the simple basics which are necessary for the things you value – like turning up to read what you need to page by page, staying in touch with friends and those influential in your life, and learning more about your field of interest – I can never become a driving instructor if I never learn to drive.

When you do, you are opening up choice because you are honouring the small, repeated steps which take you further.

The reason these three practices of choice are so effective is because they  exist in a world of choices – a creative response to a world more open  to us than we imagine.

One of the on-workings of exercising choice in this way is to increase choice around others and within others.  It’s a great gift to make.  It has no expectation than to say to another, Go, live your life as you know you must.

And the world needs more people who MUST.

Here is not there.

When we get there, the t drops off and it becomes here.

So now what?

We have to find a new there.  Not too far – too far is chaotic – but beyond our comfort zone and before chaos lies the edge of chaos – the sweet spot for development and growth.

There opportunities are everywhere.

Today I ran a little farther at a slower pace.  Next time, I might run this distance faster.  To train up, I know I need to keep pushing the boundaries, extending what I’m comfortable with, and next time a little farther again.

The receptionist has been very polite and helpful to a customer – how can he take it further?  The investor has been moving her funds more towards the ethical – how to go further?  The bus driver has been smoothing out his driving technique so not to throw passengers around – can he take this up another notch?   The lab technician has been working on how to be more focused and attentive working through samples – is it possible to connect more with these samples being from real people?

Achieving something extends your comfort zone,  but this is a dangerous place to stay.  To now stay here threatens your connectedness to the world, to others, and to our greater Self.

More!  Magis!  One group of adventurers held up this word to encourage themselves and each other on: to give everything they could and then more.  To go as far as they could and then further still.

Keep moving, keep growing, keep contributing.

We just don’t know how far we can go  until we go.

More.

It’s the leftovers of my early morning espresso.  Powerful.  It’s all I can smell.

Not everything that we need to find smells as strongly as my coffee, though – like the direction we ought to go in our lives, the decision we need to make, the next step to take.

We wish all of these things “smelt” stronger, but what we have to do is trust our sense of smell.  What we have  to do is trust what we already have: our curiosity and passions and skills.

If the “smell” is strong, there’s probably already a whole load of people who’ve found it.  But the faint, the hidden, the obscure, the needing-to-be-found-for-the-future-to-emerge kinds of smell, these require people with a developed sense of smell.

And , if I may put it this way, be the nose, not the smell.

The name of a small village in Namibia, which, in 2008 and 2009, became the first place on Earth to experiment with basic income grants (BIGs).  Putting into practice the concept that basic income is a universal human right, every person received a monthly grant of 100 Namibian dollars (around £10) regardless of their income.

After the first year, child nutrition had gone down from 42% to 10%, household poverty from 76% to 37%, school dropout rates from 42% to 0%, and crime went down by 42%.

If these facts aren’t intriguing enough, over this period, entrepreneurial activity and self-employment went up 300%.*

This post is about motivation.

We don’t have to pay or reward children to play or learn – their reward is intrinsic to the activity and the learning.

Over time this gets covered up.  We get to thinking we need to reward people to produce their best work.  (How many of us thought to reward our children with some many pounds for this exam grade and so many for this grade?)  We swallow this line – more money, promotion, shorter hours … .**  But the story of Otjivero-Omitara isn’t about external rewards, it’t about making it possible for people to connect with the thing they really want to do.

The greatest reward is doing the stuff you love.

Inside you there is still a deep curiosity.   The pursuit of this brings a great reward.  I don’t know what this is for you – it’s  nothing short of amazing how each everyone is curious about something different to the next person.   It’s a wonderful thing.

And don’t wait for anyone to give you permission.  Give yourself permission.  What is your life saying to you?

I’m curious.

(*The cost to roll this out to every Namibian?  No more than 3% of GDP.)

(**By all means get paid well for what you are curious and most rewarded by, but sometimes this can turn what you love into a job.)

What kind of world do you want to see created?

Are you waiting for instructions, or permission, or a great pep-talk?

We’ve all heard Mohandas Gandhi’s encouragement to be the change we want to see.

Many blame others for the way things are.  True, it’s hard to see a better world when many are living destructively, but this doesn’t alter the fact that we each have the capacity to create the world of our choosing, even if it’s in some small way.

It all begins inside each of us.  We wait to be motivated by others when self-motivation is what we need.

When working with others on their Strengths (“superpowers”), I remind myself, I ‘m not trying to motivate them, rather, I’m aiming to provide a space in which they can find their inner motivation – what their life has been whispering to them all along.

I need this space too.  Each morning I reconnect with my own motivation.  Generally, this involves connecting with what I can and cannot do and my passions (a better understanding of humility), gratitude for what I have already for achieving this, and a willingness to do the small things, the small steps which take me from here to there (faithfulness).

Specifically, these provided the growing conditions I need.  Biomimicry – how we can mimic nature’s design in our lives – provides a lens for seeing how this is about the opposite to self-sufficiency in three ways:

Zero Waste means no experience is useless and I can use it to learn and grow;

Solar Energy is required for everything on Earth to live; I need help from outside in the form of people, resources (ideas, input …); and …

Diversity and Symbiosis: encouraging me to do many things with many others.

Seth Godin tells us we are now living in a connection economy ‘where people who care find others who care and they all end up caring about something even more than they did before they met.’

It’s already begun inside you: connect to this and then to others.