How do you look at what you used to think, who you used to be, with kindness and curiosity rather than disdain and embarrassment?
Truth can change
Reflecting
Do I trust everyone and hang all hope on just remembering when we get to July and rip into planning? Is “just remembering” a sound business strategy, ever?
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work.”
I wasn’t going to get up today, haven’t felt like writing all week. Where there used to be space to reflect, there seems now to be space only for reaction. For news and anxiety and the barely held capacity to adjust to the new normal, each day.
Get up and out, or let it out: solutions to the creative dilemma
Honestly, sometimes writing is like thrashing in a rip. No idea is a good one. I can’t concentrate. Then I get frustrated with myself, which makes it even harder to write... I have found that if I’m struggling to get anything coherent out, usually one of two things has happened, so therefore one of two things needs to happen.
Excellence and starting
Excellence can be measured many ways. But how do you measure the best blog post of the year? The kindest random act for a stranger? The most generous networking introduction? The most beautiful film? The most heart-warming meal?
Masterpiece
Our measure of success doesn’t always have to be output. It can be, but let that be your choice, not the default.
The approach when it’s not a Rubik’s cube
With our personal lives, we usually know what to do to solve our problems. But the ones we’re paid to be solving are nuanced, fraught with risk and unlikely to have a solution that pleases everyone; as Seth Godin rightly says, all the easy problems are taken.
“It”
Not the movie. A thing. THE thing. A place, an achievement, a title, a certain amount of money, an experience. That thing we desperately want. The desire to be in the next place.
