You can’t become jealous if you maintain high self esteem.

If you begin to feel jealous or envious of others, do not try to control, manipulate, or negotiate with them to appease these feelings. That is a childish and ineffective approach. You will only encourage people to lie to you and hide things from you so they can avoid having to deal with your “Poor me… I’m not good enough… make me feel better about myself” script.

Instead, focus on setting and achieving your own goals. Start with the basics such as simple physical goals (like specific exercise targets) to restore a sense of self control, and then gradually build towards self mastery. Rebuild your sense of self-worth and confidence by asserting control over how you use your time and how you maintain your space. Restore order, cleanliness, and neatness to your home, your workplace, and your body. Create an environment that reinforces the belief that you’re in control and that you’re responsible.

The belief that you are not enough will simply attract proof of such. Prove to yourself that you are enough, not by seeking validation from others but by creating the evidence for yourself. Strive each day to grow towards your potential. If you do that, then others will tend to respect you more, and other high self esteem people will want to connect with you. Hence you will seldom have cause to feel jealous or alone; you will graduate from this problem and move on to more interesting challenges.

~ Steve Pavlina

by Michael Michalko

photo by Alex Koloskov

1.     You are creative. The artist is not a special person, each one of us is a special kind of artist. Every one of us is born a creative, spontaneous thinker. The only difference between people who are creative and people who are not is a simple belief. Creative people believe they are creative. People who believe they are not creative, are not. Once you have a particular identity and set of beliefs about yourself, you become interested in seeking out the skills needed to express your identity and beliefs. This is why people who believe they are creative become creative. If you believe you are not creative, then there is no need to learn how to become creative and you don’t. The reality is that believing you are not creative excuses you from trying or attempting anything new. When someone tells you that they are not creative, you are talking to someone who has no interest and will make no effort to be a creative thinker.

2.      Creative thinking is work. You must have passion and the determination to immerse yourself in the process of creating new and different ideas. Then you must have patience to persevere against all adversity. All creative geniuses work passionately hard and produce incredible numbers of ideas, most of which are bad. In fact, more bad poems were written by the major poets than by minor poets. Thomas Edison created 3000 different ideas for lighting systems before he evaluated them for practicality and profitability. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart produced more than six hundred pieces of music, including forty-one symphonies and some forty-odd operas and masses, during his short creative life. Rembrandt produced around 650 paintings and 2,000 drawings and Picasso executed more than 20,000 works. Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. Some were masterpieces, while others were no better than his contemporaries could have written, and some were simply bad.

3.      You must go through the motions of being creative. When you are producing ideas, you are replenishing neurotransmitters linked to genes that are being turned on and off in response to what your brain is doing, which in turn is responding to challenges. When you go through the motions of trying to come up with new ideas, you are energizing your brain by increasing the number of contacts between neurons. The more times you try to get ideas, the more active your brain becomes and the more creative you become. If you want to become an artist and all you did was paint a picture every day, you will become an artist. You may not become another Vincent Van Gogh, but you will become more of an artist than someone who has never tried.

4.      Your brain is not a computer. Your brain is a dynamic system that evolves its patterns of activity rather than computes them like a computer. It thrives on the creative energy of feedback from experiences real or fictional. You can synthesize experience; literally create it in your own imagination. The human brain cannot tell the difference between an “actual” experience and an experience imagined vividly and in detail. This discovery is what enabled Albert Einstein to create his thought experiments with imaginary scenarios that led to his revolutionary ideas about space and time. One day, for example, he imagined falling in love. Then he imagined meeting the woman he fell in love with two weeks after he fell in love. This led to his theory of acausality. The same process of synthesizing experience allowed Walt Disney to bring his fantasies to life.

5.      There is no one right answer. Reality is ambiguous. Aristotle said it is either A or not-A. It cannot be both. The sky is either blue or not blue. This is black and white thinking as the sky is a billion different shades of blue. A beam of light is either a wave or not a wave (A or not-A). Physicists discovered that light can be either a wave or particle depending on the viewpoint of the observer. The only certainty in life is uncertainty. When trying to get ideas,  do not censor or evaluate them as they occur. Nothing kills creativity faster than self-censorship of ideas while generating them. Think of all your ideas as possibilities and generate as many as you can before you decide which ones to select. The world is not black or white. It is grey.

6.      Never stop with your first good idea. Always strive to find a better one and continue until you have one that is still better. In 1862, Phillip Reis demonstrated his invention which could transmit music over the wires. He was days away from improving it into a telephone that could transmit speech. Every communication expert in Germany dissuaded him from making improvements, as  they said the telegraph is good enough. No one would buy or use a telephone. Ten years later, Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. Spencer Silver developed a new adhesive for 3M that stuck to objects but could easily be lifted off. It was first marketed as a bulletin board adhesive so the boards could be moved easily from place to place. There was no market for it. Silver didn’t discard it. One day Arthur Fry, another 3M employee, was singing in the church’s choir when his page marker fell out of his hymnal. Fry coated his page markers with Silver’s adhesive and discovered the markers stayed in place, yet lifted off without damaging the page. Hence the Post-it Notes were born. Thomas Edison was always trying to spring board from one idea to another in his work. He spring boarded his work from the telephone (sounds transmitted) to the phonograph (sounds recorded) and, finally, to motion pictures (images recorded).

7.      Expect the experts to be negative. The more expert and specialized a person becomes,  the more their mindset becomes narrowed and the more fixated they become on confirming what they believe to be absolute. Consequently, when confronted with new and different ideas,  their focus will be on conformity. Does it conform with what I know is right? If not, experts will spend all their time showing and explaining why it can’t be done and why it can’t work. They will not look for ways to make it work or get it done because this might demonstrate that what they regarded as absolute is not absolute at all. This is why when Fred Smith created Federal Express, every delivery expert in the U.S. predicted its certain doom. After all, they said, if this delivery concept was doable, the Post Office or UPS would have done it long ago.

8.      Trust your instincts. Don’t allow yourself to get discouraged. Albert Einstein was expelled from school because his attitude had a negative effect on serious students; he failed his university entrance exam and had to attend a trade school for one year before finally being admitted; and was the only one in his graduating class who did not get a teaching position because no professor would recommend him. One professor said Einstein was “the laziest dog” the university ever had. Beethoven’s parents were told he was too stupid to be a music composer. Charles Darwin’s colleagues called him a fool and what he was doing “fool’s experiments” when he worked on his theory of biological evolution. Walt Disney was fired from his first job on a newspaper because “he lacked imagination.” Thomas Edison had only two years of formal schooling, was totally deaf in one ear and was hard of hearing in the other, was fired from his first job as a newsboy and later fired from his job as a telegrapher; and still he became the most famous inventor in the history of the U.S.

9.      There is no such thing as failure. Whenever you try to do something and do not succeed, you do not fail. You have learned something that does not work. Always ask “What have I learned about what doesn’t work?”, “Can this explain something that I didn’t set out to explain?”, and “What have I discovered that I didn’t set out to discover?” Whenever someone tells you that they have never made a  mistake, you are talking to someone who has never tried anything new.

10.   You do not see things as they are; you see them as you are. Interpret your own experiences. All experiences are neutral. They have no meaning. You give them meaning by the way you choose to interpret them. If you are a priest, you see evidence of God everywhere. If you are an atheist, you see the absence of God everywhere. IBM observed that no one in the world had a personal computer. IBM interpreted this to mean there was no market. College dropouts, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, looked at the same absence of personal computers and saw a massive opportunity. Once Thomas Edison was approached by an assistant while working on the filament for the light bulb. The assistant asked Edison why he didn’t give up. “After all,” he said, “you have failed 5000 times.” Edison looked at him and told him that he didn’t understand what the assistant meant by failure, because, Edison said, “I have discovered 5000 things that don’t work.” You construct your own reality by how you choose to interpret your experiences.

11.   Always approach a problem on its own terms. Do not trust your first perspective of a problem as it will be too biased toward your usual way of thinking. Always look at your problem from multiple perspectives. Always remember that genius is finding a perspective no one else has taken. Look for different ways to look at the problem. Write the problem statement several times using different words. Take another role, for example, how would someone else see it, how would Jay Leno, Pablo Picasso, George Patton see it? Draw a picture of the problem, make a model, or mold a sculpture. Take a walk and look for things that metaphorically represent the problem and force connections between those things and the problem (How is a broken store window like my communications problem with my students?) Ask your friends and strangers how they see the problem. Ask a child. How would a ten year old solve it? Ask a grandparent. Imagine you are the problem. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

12.   Learn to think unconventionally. Creative geniuses do not think analytically and logically. Conventional, logical, analytical thinkers are exclusive thinkers which means they exclude all information that is not related to the problem. They look for ways to eliminate possibilities. Creative geniuses are inclusive thinkers which mean they look for ways to include everything, including things that are dissimilar and totally unrelated. Generating associations and connections between unrelated or dissimilar subjects is how they provoke different thinking patterns in their brain.  These new patterns lead to new connections which give them a different way to focus on the information and different ways to interpret what they are focusing on. This is how original and truly novel ideas are created. Albert Einstein once famously remarked “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard them.

via creativethinking.net

It was the first part of NLP exercise I did, and I had a mental block. I don’t remember or can’t imaging that feeling:-( Rather I can remember when I felt wonderful physically… or mentally, but not entirely wonderful. So now I want to catch this “wonderful” filling moment and remember it.

I felt wonderful when I created this flower. It was spontaneous desire, and I just followed my inspiration.

This is a great book. Author pushes to hear your inner creative voice, be unique, and find your own DOOR.

Below are some quotes that affect and inspired me:

“If somebody in your industry is more successful than you, it’s probably because he works harder at it than you. Sure, maybe he’s more inherently talented, more adept at networking, but I don’t consider that an excuse. Over time, that advantage counts for less and less. Which is why the world is full of highly talented, network-savvy, failed mediocrities.”

_____

“If your business plan depends on suddenly being “discovered” by some big shot, your plan will probably fail. Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain.”

_____

“Nobody can tell you if what you’re doing is good, or worthwhile. The more compelling the path, the more lonely it is.

So naturally ask yourself, if and when you finally come up with The Big Idea, after years of toil, struggle, and doubt, how do you know or not it is “The One”?

Answer: You don’t.

There’s no glorious swelling of existential triumph.

That’s not what happens.

All you get is this rather quiet, kvetchy voice inside you that seems to say, “This is totally stupid. This is utterly moronic. This is a complete waste of time. I’m going to do it anyway.”

And you go do it anyway.”

_____

“Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the “creative bug” is just a wee voice telling you, “I’d like my crayons back, please.”

So you’ve got the itch to do something.

Write a screenplay, start a painting, write a book, turn your recipe for a fudge brownies into a proper business, build a better mousetrap, whatever.   …

You don’t know if you’re any good or not, but you think you could be. And the idea terrifies you. The problem is, even if you are good, you know nothing about this kind of business. You don’t know any publishers or agents or venture capitalists or any of these fancy-shmancy kind of folk.   ….

Heh. That’s not your wee voice asking for the crayons back. That’s your other voice, your adult voice, your boring and tedious voice trying to find way to get the wee crayon voice to shut the hell up.

Your wee voice doesn’t want you to sell something. Your wee voice wants you to make something. There’s a big difference. Your wee voice doesn’t give a damn about publishers, venture capitalists, or Hollywood producers.

Go ahead and make something. Make something really special.  Make something amazing that will really blow the mind of anybody who sees it.  …

So you have to listen to the wee voice or it will die…taking a big chunk of you along with it.

They’re only crayons. You didn’t fear them in kindergarten, why fear them now?”

_____

“Since the modern, scientifically conceived corporation was intended in the early half of twentieth century, creativity has been sacrificed in favor of forwarding the interests of the “team player”.

Fair enough. There was more money in going it that way; that’s why they did it.

There’s only one problem. Team players are not very good  at creating value on their own. They are not autonomous; they need a team in order to exist.

So now corporations are awash with nonautonomous thinkers.   …

If you’re creative, if you can think independently, if you can articulate passion, if you can override the fear of being wrong, then your company needs you now more than it ever did.    …

And if you don’t see yourself as particularly creative, that’s not reality, that’s a self-imposed limitation. Only you can decide whether you want to carry that around with you forever. Life is short.”

_____

“…every kid with guitar or a pen or a paintbrush or an idea for a new business wants to be exceptional. Every kid underestimates his competition, and overestimates his chances. Every kid sucker for the idea that there’s a way to make it without having to do the actual hard work.

So the bars … are awash with people throwing their life away in the desperate hope of finding a shortcut, any shortcut. And a lot of them aren’t even young anymore….”

_____

“The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do from what you are not.

Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring. Know this and plan accordingly.”

_____

“Stop worrying about technology. start worrying about people who trust you.  …

The old ways are dead. And you need people around you who concur.

That means hanging out more with the creative people, the freaks, the real visionaries, than you’re already doing. Thinking more about what their needs are, and responding accordingly.

It doesn’t matter what industry we’re talking about – architecture, advertising, petrochemicals – they’re around, they’re easy enough to find if you make the effort, is you’ve got something worthwhile to offer in return. Avoid the dullards; avoid the folk who play it safe. They can’t help you anymore. Their stability model no longer offers that much stability. They are extinct; they are extinction.”

_____

“Diluting your product to make it more “commercial” will just make people like it less.”

_____

“Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.”

_____

“Don’t worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually. Inspiration precedes the desire to create, not the other way around.”

_____

“A Picasso always looks like Picasso painted it. Hemingway always sounds like Hemingway. A Beethoven symphony always sounds like a Beethoven symphony. Part of being master is learning how to sing in nobody else’s voice but your own. Every artist is looking for their big, definitive “Ah-Ha!” moment, whether they’re a master or not. That moment where they find their true voice, once and for all. …

Was it luck? Perhaps a little bit.

But it wasn’t the format that made the art great. It was the fact that somehow while playing around with something new, suddenly they found they were able to put their entire selves into it. …

Put your whole self into it, and you will find your true voice. Hold back and you won’t. It’s that simple.”

_____

“The best way to get approval is not to need it. This is equally true in art and business. And love. And sex. And just about everything else worth having.”

_____

“Power is never given. Power is taken. … what “taking power” means. Not needing anything from another person in order to be the best in the world.”

_____

“There’s a famous old quip: “A lot of people in business say they have twenty years’ experience, when in fact all they really have is one years’ experience, repeated twenty times.”

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles ~ by Steven Pressfield

“Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”

“So if you paralyzed with fear, it’s a good sign. It shows you what you have to do.”

“The more Resistance you experience, the more important your unmanifested art/project/enterprise is to you – and the more gratification you will feel when you finally do it.”

“Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.”"

“If you find yourself criticizing other people, you’re probably doing it out of Resistance. When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.

Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others.”

“Technically, the professional takes money. technically, the pro plays for pay. But in the end, he does it for love.”

“We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents/teachers think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us.”

“We are not born with unlimited choices.

We can’t be anything we want be.

We come into this world with specific, personal destiny.

We have job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become…

Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but find out who we already are and become it.”

“Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”

Hope you like these quotes as I like it:-) Stay with me. Genia.

I’ve tried to find my Core Values in the previous exercise.

Here are 32 questions how to prioritize and establish the Values. Looks very interesting. I will do this exercise next week, and post my results here.

Click and Ask yourself these questions

photo by Alex Koloskov

Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring. Know this and plan accordingly.” ~Cartoonist Hugh MacLeod
via www.brainpickings.org

“Carl Rogers (humanistic psychologist) believed that humans have one basic motive, that is the tendency to self-actualize – i.e. to fulfill one’s potential and achieve the highest level of ‘human-beingness’ we can.
Like a flower that will grow to its full potential if the conditions are right, but which is constrained by its environment, so people will flourish and reach their potential if their environment is good enough.”

“For a person to “grow”, they need an environment that provides them with

- genuineness (openness and self-disclosure),
- acceptance (being seen with unconditional positive regard),
- and empathy (being listened to and understood).

Without these, relationships and healthy personalities will not develop as they should, much like a tree will not grow without sunlight and water.”

“The self-concept includes three components:

Self worth (or self-esteem) – what we think about ourselves. Rogers believed feelings of self-worth developed in early childhood and were formed from the interaction of the child with the mother and father.

Self-image – How we see ourselves, which is important to good psychological health. Self-image includes the influence of our body image on inner personality. At a simple level, we might perceive ourselves as a good or bad person, beautiful or ugly. Self-image has an affect on how a person thinks feels and behaves in the world.

Ideal self – This is the person who we would like to be. It consists of our goals and ambitions in life, and is dynamic – i.e. forever changing. The ideal self in childhood is not the ideal self in our teens or late twenties etc.

Carl Rogers believed that every person can achieve their goals, wishes and desires in life.”

“Carl Rogers believed that for a person to achieve self-actualization they must be in a state of congruence.

This means that self-actualization occurs when a person’s “ideal self” (i.e. who they would like to be) is congruent with their actual behavior (self-image).”

“According to Rogers (1959), we want to feel, experience and behave in ways which are consistent with our self-image and which reflect what we would like to be like, our ideal-self. The closer our self-image and ideal-self are to each other, the more consistent or congruent we are and the higher our sense of self-worth.”

Read full article here.