Have you ever heard that a person who feels taller than others loves itself more? You may call that person egocentric or whatever you like, but it’s a fact, that somehow your perception of your stature has a direct relation to your self-esteem. It doesn’t matter if you’re little or 7 feet tall, the perception is what matters.

Have you ever met a person who is obviously smaller than others, but who feels taller? High self-esteem. Or a person taller than other but who feels smaller? Low self-esteem. The “normal” thing would be to feel exactly as you are. You are taller, you feel taller, and the same if you’re small. The thing is that that way your stature would be ironically telling your actual self-esteem. No one likes to feel smaller than others, even if the person is smaller.

Let’s say we now see people as they feel themselves. High self-esteem people as taller ones, and low self-esteem people as smaller ones. You know, the more your self-esteem, the taller you are in this fictional world we’re picturing. Now…

Put yourself in a body of water

Picture this: an empty cube. Large enough for you to stand inside, and for your eyes to be exactly at half the height of the cube. Fill half the cube with water. That’ll be our water body.

That way, the water is touching your eyes. What are you seeing? The surface of the water, and if it moves (as it should), you’d be seeing underwater and above the water from time to time. You know, the water moves and at some point it covers your eyes, as at some points it doesn’t.

Manipulating concepts: What if your self-esteem was higher? What if it was lower?

You picture yourself in the cube, and your eyes exactly in the point where water and air touch. Now picture yourself as if you had more self-esteem, like “a head” more, if you know what I mean. Your eyes now can see the upper world: In this case, whatever is drawn on the inner sides of the cube that are above the water. But, the water is too reflective, and as so, you can’t see what’s below the water level.

Now, picture yourself with less self-esteem, that meaning, with your eyes below the water level. In this case, you can see what’s there, below the water, drawn in the inner sides of the cube, too, but not what’s outside, above the water level.

The cause is basically the fact that being the surface of the water reflective, bring less light to the water below the surface, makes the surface be shiny enough to feel like a separated entity: It’s not the water, but a layer, a veil that covers and hides one side from the under (the upper and under sides).

Happy and sad times, getting bigger, getting smaller

I’m making an analogy here. When your self-esteem is high, your “self” in this imaginary cube world we created gets bigger, and vice versa. Now, self-esteem can be seen as a life-long characteristic, or as a dynamic characteristic. When seen as the latter, you see that self-esteem changes from time to time, making you “love” yourself more at some points in your life than others.

What does that means? That, for example, when you regret doing something, you love yourself less, because you did something wrong. It doesn’t matter now how much less, so moving on…

When you feel happy, your self-esteem is higher than when you feel sad. That means that if something makes you sad, your self-esteem goes down. Meaning, for your “self” on the cube world, that it will get smaller. Directly derived from that, the water level will be above your eyes, and you would only be able to see underwater.

The upper and under worlds

You can only see underwater if you’re, well, underwater. There light only reaches in little quantities, and in the inner walls (the cube’s) are drawn thoughts, in a way that, with such a poor light, seem like sad thoughts. On the up side (above the water level), more thoughts are drawn in the inner walls, but being outside of the water, light is anything but poor, and those thoughts seem to be happy thoughts.

Add to it, that underwater is harder to see further away than above the water level. It’s more difficult to see through water (a liquid), than through air (a gas), because light gets “stuck” in water molecules (like the surface), making it seem like the light goes slower, or with less energy. The thing is, that while the light source is above the water level, that zone will be clear, while underwater will be a little darker.

Happiness, sadness and perception: the analogy

The states of happiness and sadness are exactly the upper-world and the underworld in this imaginary cubic world (and by upper and under world I mean under and above the water level). Your height represents your self-esteem, and it is, in a daily basis, directly derived from your current state of happiness and sadness. If you’re happy, you get more self-esteem, and your “self” on that world gets taller, and eventually gets to see what’s above the water level.

What’s above is nothing more than happy thoughts, or what you think are happy thoughts (which is what matters: Your perception of those thoughts). When you’re feeling down, your self-esteem goes down, and so does your “self” on that world, making you only see the underwater thoughts, which are sad thoughts (as you see them).

The thing, after all, is that from your state depends your well-being, your self-esteem, and from it, your perception of life, of your own thoughts. They might be different being happy from being sad, but some (if not most) just feel that way. Feeling sad will make you see sad things, while feeling happy will make forget about those sad things. At least, that’s how I see it. Can you see underwater when your self-esteem is above the level? Are you happy being underwater? Or would you like to float above it?

Perception of reality: happy times, sad times and self-esteem.

When we are happy, we think clearly, or at least we feel so. We may not see some bad things “as they are”, but we do see good things, and in general, we feel “normal” and feel life “fluid”. On the meantime, as everything is “normal”, thoughts are clean and you feel good, creativity comes naturally, and ideas, thoughts and general creation too. When we are sad, none of this actually happens.

It depends on how sad you are at the moment, but in general, if you’re an “average person” (say, who gets equally sad and happy moments, and is not somehow depressed or something affecting those emotions), when you get sad, is for a reason. Maybe a friend insulted you, maybe you didn’t win at something you were sure you would, or maybe the friend that insulted you for not winning just died. Those are just examples of what could make you sad. Now, regarding that reason, thoughts come in the way.

When we are happy, as I said, life feels “fluid”, as you think what you want to think. When you are sad, unwanted thoughts come in the way, and make you think in things you don’t want to think about. Like, for example, the bad thing that caused your sadness, or just other bad things, just because we are masochists sometimes.

Creativity doesn’t come naturally when I’m sad

If you remember correctly, my articles are based on empirical knowledge (information I gather basically from observing others and myself), so this may not be (and should not be) the same for everybody. Yet it is for me, and you may be affected by this too. So the point is…

I can’t be creative while sad. The reason is that when I’m sad, I over-think everything. I think and think about why I’m sad, and about other sad things. I think I’m an “average person”, and I can tolerate many things, yet I can be sad, just as anyone else. The thing is that sad, I can’t think straight. Life doesn’t feel “fluid”, as unwanted thoughts come in the way. Just as writing is difficult with interruptions, being creative is difficult being sad.

Thinking and feeling

Sadness and happiness are emotions. We, as humans, think and feel, somehow separately. How I feel doesn’t really must affect what I think, but surely how I think. Happy people usually write happy things, and sad people sad things. People is affected by their emotions, even when creativity is the center of it all.

Thoughts are anything but emotions. The emotions may control the “fabric” of these thoughts to some degree, and even the reading of them (see Lines of thoughts, if you’re interested), but not the thoughts themselves. They are separated entities, and as so, you may feel super happy about winning some argument, while thinking about how you cheated and told a lie. The thought itself can form a feeling (guilt?), but the main emotion is not related to the thought; none caused the other.

People tend to rationalize feelings. You usually feel bad because something happened, that made you feel that way. With that information, you could (you do) think that rationalizing the emotion, and understanding why you feel bad, to then “downplay” the reason to not feel bad, will actually work. Yet it doesn’t actually work, because, as I said, emotions and thoughts are different things, even if you “make a copy” of an emotion, and “translate it” into a thought, to then “edit” it erasing the sadness effect, the original emotion won’t change.

It does get better

Emotions do disappear, or transform, with time, only, as far as I know. If you’re at least 5 years old, you could make a long list of how many times you’ve been sad. You could also make a list of how many times you’ve been happy. It’s not about comparing both lists, but to realize nothing lasts forever. Even if that thought is sad itself, it tells you a bad feeling will eventually go away.

So, creativity and my thoughts/emotions

The creative process can be seriously interrupted by a sad mind, which is normal. The reason, as I told, is that bad emotions make the fabric of thoughts to create bad ones, even if unrelated to the moment. In my case, the bad thoughts themselves don’t interrupt my creative process, but the way I handle those thoughts.

I shut down.

Usually I’m thinking a lot, about anything I want to think. When I’m sad, I think a lot, too, but about things I don’t want to. That makes my mind a mess, as in the first case I can organize my thoughts to an end, yet in the second, I can’t. So my solution, is to just shut down my mind, and stop thinking, or at least stop trying to think in this organized way I like so much. That is what interrupts my creative process.

Why does it matter to you how I handle this?

It should give you a picture of a way to handle bad thoughts, bad emotions, a reason a person (I) may stop thinking, the way emotions and thoughts are not completely (but yet) correlated and, in a few words: Another thing to think about this week.

Think about yourself, about something that bothers you, about bad feelings, about how you handle them, how you should handle them, how people think, act, and feel. Think about yourself as a machine that can always break down, but can always be repaired.

How are you feeling right now? Are you sad about something? Are you happy? How is your creative process going? Can you think of 5 different uses for a paperclip? More? None? Share a piece of your mind below in the comments.

Why I can’t be creative while feeling sad (And why you should care about it)

If there is something that always gets me knock out of writing, drawing, and anything that has something to do with creativity is in fact, the lack of creativity. It’s not that I lack of creativity, but that at the moment, there no inspiration, and no creativity, as an energy value, not as a adjective, if that makes sense.

The fact is we’re all creative, yet not always we feel it, nor we act creatively. That’s the reason I came up with this: II was soooo bored and found myself with such a lack of inspiration, that it occurred to me, after a while, that the only way out of it was to need to answer a question.

The fact is, that even when philosophers thought more about questions that about answering those questions, answering is mush easier that formulating a question. Here is why:

Wen you have a question, you already have a topic, you already have a goal, and you already have initial information (even the tiniest information gathered from the question itself, if the topic is unknown).

When you have nothing, and must create a question, a problem, to then find answers of just something to say about it… You have nothing. And it’s way more difficult to, from nothing, create a question, than from something create an answer.

Question and answers, why are they so important?

The thing with a question, is that it can have thousands of possible answers. Maybe not right answers, but logical ones. I could ask “what color is the sky?”, and you could answer: red, blue, green, orange, purple, rainbow… Thousands of colors, right… Even green is a possible answer. Why? Because it’s a color. The logic there is that you’re asking for a color, and the sky might be green at some point. I don’t care answering if it actually can be green, but that green is a color, therefore, it’s a possible answer.

Why can’t the sky be green? Why can’t people believe the sky is, or could be green? Why is blue not green? Why people like the sky being blue? Do they like it? Could the sky be red and people would still like it?

Believe it or not, much more questions can be formulated from this. What you need to see is that those are formulated from an answer: “The sky is green”, which was the answer to a question: “What color is the sky?”. So, basically from a question I could simply find an answer, from which I could formulate several other more interesting questions (I believe). A question, from an answer to another question, in fewer words.

Every answer creates two more questions

It’s not an accurate statement. Yet it has a simple meaning: no matter how much you answer, more questions will arise, because, at the end, what matter are the questions themselves, not the answers. The questions matter, precisely to be able to find answers, to think about the question, create an idea, generate answers and finally create another question.

It’s all about knowledge, about finding knowledge.

Has this anything to do with creativity?

Yes it does. Creativity is creation. It doesn’t matter how we create, but to in fact, create. There are many ways to express ourselves, and therefore, create in the process. Painting, drawing, writing; those are the most common examples when it comes to creativity. But, what could you write about, draw, or paint? It’s all about inspiration, plus, a thought or an idea.

But why a thought or an idea? Because you can just see a beautiful bench and start drawing it, or painting it, or writing about it… But how could you write, or paint, or draw? You must know something about it, and that initial knowledge comes from seeing the bench (see Knowledge: from observation to ideas).

But some times, when you’re out of inspiration, you need a creativity boost. My advise to you is to think about questions! Questions can solve the tiniest problem, because you have answers to answer them (I saw it…). It’s way harder to come up with something out of nowhere, than to answer a question a million times and think about why you answered that way. Study your answers, study people answers, and you’ll find knowledge, ideas, thoughts. That’s enough inspiration for me, is it for you?

Try it sometime, think of a question, a simple one, that ask for information, answer it with anything you could, logically, not necessarily true in reality. Is it easy to come up with an idea after seeing your answers? After asking, answering and reformulating? Do you think the whole process is worth it? And by the way, would you like an article with useful questions for that matter?

Creativity boost! Answer: questions!

A nice person is that who respects, who’s tolerant and accepts the existence of other people. Are you any different from that? If you are, in any way, a little intolerant, or sometimes you wish others weren’t around you (like that creepy fellow on the bus, that annoying neighbor of yours or a dumb politician in charge), you should at least (out of respect) be respectful, in any way you can. Even lying.

When you lie, you should follow some rules that won’t make you a good liar, but will make you a respectful, decent, liar (maybe on the inside wishing you could tell the harsh truth).

These rules are:

1. Don’t make fun of them, be realistic with your lie.

It’s not about telling a good lie. It’s about not enraging them by telling a lie that bad. It’s about making a lie sound realistic. Saying you fell from a 10th floor is not realistic, saying you fell from a 7th floor is, if you tell how bad your injuries are.

Again, it’s not about being a good liar, but about being a decent one. Don’t tell people you’re a famous lawyer if they haven’t heard your name even once. Don’t tell them about your 5 luxury cars, if they haven’t seen a rolex, a tie, a yacht, or something.

It’s about not making fun of them. Tell a realistic lie, based on what they know and don’t know about you or the object in question (the lie is most likely not about you, I hope).

2. Let them reply to it, by making the lie “replyable”.

As the lie is supposedly true, you should never stop people who want to reply, or say something about it. Even if it’s the most realistic lie and there’s no way they could tell it is one, they would sense something’s wrong if you don’t let them talk, and share their thoughts.

But it’s not only what you say after the lie, but how you say it. A lie is a lie, and as such it’s not supposed to be a general rule, a universal truth. Even supposedly being a truth, you know it’s not, and by making it a universal truth can make people think they can’t reply, argue, against it.

Make your lie fit a normal statement, with no generalizations, and take into account that..

3. It’s not an statement: let them talk within the lie.

Sounds bad, but your lie is not supposed to be an statement. A decent liar doesn’t say harsh words, dry thoughts. A decent liar creates a discussion, makes people talk about an idea, the lie, so that they feel good. On the mean-time, you know you made your effort to not be rude or disrespectful.

Because respect is what’s important. That being so, and following the very first point…

4. Do not let them know it’s a lie, but accept it is, once they realize.

Letting them know it’s a lie while you tell it or immediately after is just as rude and disrespectful as making your lie sound like a 5 year old’s. A decent liar’s lie must sound realistic so that people don’t feel tricked, outwitted, played, or else. You must make the other feel good or not make them feel a thing. Once you make them feel bad about your lie, you’re making a mistake. You’re not being a decent liar.

5. Let them know it was a lie, once the lie is no longer needed.

At the end, a liar is a liar. A lie is a lie. You should, being a decent liar, a respectful liar, a liar after all, feel bad about your lie. IT’s never about being a good lair. It’s about not making fun of other people. And by getting away with a lie, you are.

Either way, if you already told a lie, and did all of the above, you are almost a decent liar. The only thing left, is to claim your lie, tell you lied, reveal the truth, and make sure others understand why, how and what you did.

Then, and only then, I, and yourself, will be able to call you a decent liar.

5 Rules to become a decent liar

This is something curious I thought about several days ago. I know, and I figure you know too, that senses trigger memories sometimes. You can see a face and remember a person, or by smelling a perfume, hearing a voice… You can trigger memories from specific smell, sounds, senses… If they relate to your life in some way.

There are different kind of senses, and a different times we pay attention to them in different proportions. Some times we listen more carefully than we smell, or touch more than we taste, or well, you get the idea. Referring only to sounds and smells, I noted something odd…

You can remember things, as well as you can remember moments. But those memories are different; one refers to space, and the other to time. Can you recreate in your head the last memory you have of your best-friend’s home? Now, that is different from recreating the last time you were there. In the first you recreate the empty space (empty as no people are there in your head), in the second you see the people and not the space (you do, but not that much).

No, what kind of memories does smells and sounds trigger? Both. At first I thought smells could only trigger space memories (which means to remember a place, or something, a thing, a person), and sounds a time memory (again, I’m talking about dimensions, this means time passing, a moment).I was wrong.

Kind of sense translates in kind of memory

It depends on the kind of the specific sense to tell what kind of memory it will trigger. Sensing a perfume you’ve only smelled once before, will trigger that moment’s memory. Instead, if you know that perfume to be used only by one person (as you’ve sense her/him wear it more than once), it’ll trigger the person’s memory.

In other words, you sense something, and you store that sense (a smell, a sound, a texture, a taste, a view) in your memory, apart from the “complete memory”, that means, the memory of the moment, the things around, the people, and those things; specific things apart from sense, memory triggers, but yet, linked. Then, when you sense that again, (the smell or the others), your mind sees the link and retrieves the “complete” memory linked to the sense.

Number of occurrences dictates kind of memory.

If that sensing, of smell or sound, happened once, your mind will store it as time triggers: you’ll most likely remember the moment more than the actual things. The actions, what was happening more than what was there, or how were things physically.

If the sensing happened several times, your mind will now most likely associate it more to a thing, which you can describe, so that the sense is most likely to be linked to the description of the thing, and not an specific moment or time.

I don’t think I was have any way to actually prove this. That’s not my work with these articles. I share my “findings” (no investigation on it) to make you think. I believe this to be true, but the important part is: Do you believe it or not? Why? Can this be applicable to other senses? How? Express yourself!

Remembering with sounds and smells

Knowledge is everywhere. Knowledge is information, and it can be gathered from literally anywhere. This information, this knowledge, can be obtained anywhere you look at, or use any other sense. That’s why it’s said that observation is a way to get information by the use of the senses and sometimes (introspection, or some sort), the use of out own minds.

So, being knowledge everywhere, could it be important to understand how it works? where does it come from? Obviously the answer is yes.

Knowledge works in three stages. I won’t tell you how it works, how it’s formed, but I can tell you that there’s an initial information, gathered from observation, a processing stage, in which an idea is formed, linking thoughts, pieces of information, and a final stage, the processed idea.

1. The initial information: raw knowledge.

The first information we get from our environment are things like “the sky is blue”, “the building is high”, “the car is fast”. Those are quick appreciations of the things and people around. When we notice something physical in someone: dark hair, blue eyes, soft skin, dry hair. Anything physical goes in here, because those are immediate appreciations.

On the other hand, that’s empirical knowledge: knowledge you gather from direct observation. When we talk about what’s on a book, say a school textbook, we are talking about pre-processed thoughts. Those are ideas that other people got by looking at the empirical knowledge they gathered and processing the information. That’s when education falls a little. We usually understand things better when we got those results, but, on the other hand, no one could do all those experiments and find those results in one life.

So, empirical knowledge gathered by you is part of the main stage. Also, what you gather from readings, of any kind, from explanations, or anything, goes here too, if, and this is important, you haven’t processed the pre-built ideas. Reading a book is fine, but if you don’t think about the ideas there present and the implications of those ideas, you are not processing, and therefore, that will remain as information, and not as a self-created idea.

2. The processing thoughts: possibilities.

When you thought about the skies being blue and the ocean being also blue… Perhaps you told to yourself “Hey! both the ocean and the skies are blue, could there be some connection?”. That question is a “thought in process”. It’s the idea of an idea; it’s the essence of what might become a real, logical, idea. But, it’s still a question.

It’s the option. The thought that there might be some more information you don’t know about: the connection between the two things, for example. The idea of an idea, the possible knowledge of more knowledge, if that makes any sense.

3. The final stage: real ideas.

As you might have thought, here goes the real ideas, the finished thoughts. Once you finally relate two or more things, the relation between them becomes new knowledge. You acquire this new knowledge by constructing it, basing yourself on the first stage’s knowledge, the raw knowledge,, or empirical if you want.

This kind of knowledge, of thought, is the one which is written upon, most of the time. Once you clarify your thoughts, and raw knowledge, and tie one thing to another, you construct knowledge, so that this new knowledge becomes part of your whole knowledge database, so to say.

All the laws of physics, all text that is found on school books, or even in most cases what people call knowledge, is this: processed thoughts. Even if knowledge takes even the raw observations. Knowledge is everything, therefore is everywhere. Or isn’t it? Do you agree to this idea? Or you believe observations are not knowledge? What do you think knowledge is? Or is formed? Share your thoughts!

Knowledge: from observation to ideas

People can feel bad on a daily basis. You may be a lucky person a don’t feel bad in days… Or an unlucky person and feel bad every day, every hour. The thing is that we all usually feel bad in a daily basis. IT’s not that we get depressed, sad or alike, but something makes us feel, at least a little bit, bad.

Have you felt bad today? Possibly (not necessarily probable). That only means you are human, you’re a person and you understand that you can’t be ok with everything around you.

Because that’s the point, don’t you think? No one can be ok with everything around. It’s normal to feel some things are not what they are supposed to, according to you, to your way of thinking. That’s where I’m aiming.

Your way of thinking changes.

You are one of the 7 billion people on this planet. And you’re unique. According to probability, it’s almost impossible for another person to think exactly like you. Considering the small (yes, small) population of the planet, there’s no way your genetic scheme and environment conditions could exist in somebody else.

But out of scientific stuff… You think like no one else, so the things that bother you may or may not bother anyone else. And that’s probably because the way you think, the thoughts you create, are different.

A thought can be “friends are supposed to care for each other”, and then a friend suddenly does something that translates in “I don’t care about you”. What does that mean to you? You original thought is attacked by a contradictory thought. That person is still a friend is your “people database” (a.k.a. your head), but an illogical action was done and your mind can’t process it well.

At that point, your mind, and anyone else’s, can solve the problem: either the original thought (statement) is wrong, and should be eliminated (meaning you start believing friends may not care for you at all, which is… bad), or that that person status (“friend”) is wrong. It mostly depends on which thought (statement or status) you believe the most.

Now, the “bad feeling part” that is directly derived from the event, is between that so-called friend doing a then-considered-irrational action, and the point your head solves the logic problem (which is valid? the statement “friends don’t do that” or the person status as “friend”?). What comes next is something like nostalgia, as you still know the previous state (previous to the change of mind), and people just don’t like change.

Any thought can change.

Obviously a thought of any kind can be changed and result in a bad feeling. Not just relationship-related, but any kind of thought. When it changes, it generates a bad feeling, because as you “knew” that was right, you constructed your “other knowledge” around it… Like a web. And when it turns out to be wrong, part of the web falls apart.

What do you think about this? What kind of thought this could never be applied to? Any experiences relating this mind-changing events? Tell your stories!

Why do you feel bad?

Once people on different places talk about creativity, I always wonder if they have really thought about it. There are thousands of tips online. How to be creativity, they say. How can you explain to someone to be creativity. Either you are creative, or you are not.

But the thing here is to understand the “you are” doesn’t mean you, as a person, are, in general. The “you are” means you, right now, are or not, creative. So, in other words, it’s about time.

There’s a problem with English language, that Spanish (my language), doesn’t have. The verb “to be”, in Spanish, can be “ser” or “estar“. The first means “to be” in a permanent way: You are american, that coffee is brown, this wall is hard. While the latter, “estar”, means “to be”, in a temporary way: You are angry, he is sleeping, that coffee is hot.

Get the idea? Moving on, then.

The reason I pointed that out is because you and anybody else can feel confused when books are sold on “how to be creative”. When people say someone is very creative, or that are/aren’t. Both uses of the verb have not the same meaning. Yet, the second use, to say a person is or not creative is somewhat incorrect.

Because we are all creative.

It’s not about left or right brains (false stuff), but about the capability of the human, as part of the human species, to create things. It’s what has always set us apart from animals in matters of thinking: we create. We build things, the biggest cities, the smallest chips, we build them. Maybe not all of us, but not just a few. We all can create, even if not all of us do.

Every child creates. It’s a rule. Even a what-the-hell-is-that kind of drawing counts. So why can’t you? That’s the main thing to understand clearly: You are creative, as a human. In qualitative matters, you, and everyone else around you, are creative. In quantitative matters, yes, there might be people more or less creative than you. So what? In anything you do someone is better, someone is worse.

You’re just not being creative right now.

It’s a fact: You are creative. It’s a wild guess of mine: You’re not being creative right now. If you’re reading this, means you’re not being creative. IT’s not a waste of time to read (I hope this article is not), but the fact is that reading a piece of content with no story behind it has no creative effect on you, unless you’re already thinking in your next move. Are you? If you are, congratulations! You’re being creative.

But seriously, re are times you are not creative at all. Maybe you’ve mentally pointed them out: after dinner, watching T.V., driving, during a math test… It’s not really about the time of the day but about what you’re doing, right? Television, for example, takes a great part of your concentration. Some people can read while watching T.V., most can’t. The thing is, creativity is not friends with multitasking.

Why? Because creativity need your whole concentration. Either you put your head on it, or the idea is missed forever. And that statement should forever terrify you. An idea is an invaluable thing. Even a crappy one. Is your creation, and you should value any creation of yours. You should be critical sometimes, too. A good photographer won’t ever publish the 700 shots he made before a great exceptional shot of the sunset (cliché, I know).

So, two things: value your ideas, and concentrate.

But how could you concentrate? In a perfect world, I would tell you to make a schedule, and you would easily do it. But, this is an imperfect world, and not all minds work alike. I can’t follow a schedule for my own time, and I won’t think out of nowhere that you can, either. Instead, I’ll tell you to map a mental schedule. Don’t follow it, that is, just create it.

You must create a schedule just to see for yourself the time you spend on different activities. How much do you sleep at night? Do you take occasional naps? How much time do you take to eat? Go to school? Or work? Homework of all kinds? Procrastinating? Watching T.V.? Reading? Playing with your kids? Talking to your “significant other”? Thinking?

Of course you think all day. Yet. How much of those thoughts do you keep? Do you have a notebook to fill with them? Or you just let them vanish in seconds? It’s not about taking note of every thought (NO!), it’s about noticing that if you’re not doing it at least once a day, you’re wasting creativity away!

Manage your time, your hours, your ideas!

Most of the time our thoughts are not creativity-oriented. We are not thinking about create, but about what we are doing or what we need to do, or what we did… That kind of things. What should I do next? What am I eating this afternoon? How many things do I have remaining in my to-do list? Why did I do such a stupid thing yesterday? What should I buy [person] for his/her birthday?

The thing with being actively creative, is to understand you won’t be creative all the time. Understand your own personal schedule (fictitious or not), and then be able to think wisely, and think better, to manage your hours, and set, each day, some time to think, to be creative. And how can you be creative at that time? Think that you set that time to be creative, so that you don’t have to do anything else, and you need to not procrastinate. See how questions can help you with a creativity boost.

Why should you be creative? I let you answer that question. Feel free to share your answers, or better: Your thoughts about this. Do you really need a time to be creative? Or creativity is something spontaneous, no time-strings attached?

Creativity: it’s about taking care of your ideas, concentrating and time

If I told you to related that word to a personality, to a person… That person would probably be one that finds mistakes in everything: “The floor is too white”, “the paintings are not straight”, “the text has a mistake”. That sort of things are what you probably associate to a perfectionist.

I’m not going to say you’re wrong, but I just have a different concept; I take a different approach when I define myself as a perfectionist.

If I say perfectionism is the search for perfection… Why should I refer to an impossible state of perfection? Why am I looking for a different scenario than the real one? If the painting is not straight, why, looking for perfection, should I think in a reality in which the painting is straight? I mean… I do, it’s (I believe) normal to think about the painting being straight as a perfect state…

Then there are two things to consider. First, there is a reality state; the way things are or could be. Second, there is a set of subconscious or unworded rules that each of us have that define perfection. I may believe perfection is when the painting is perfectly aligned to the floor and walls, but you may believe otherwise.

Could that set of rules change?

It’s not necessary to think about a possible perfect, yet hypothetical, state. That’s not necessary if you instead, change your perceptions, in a temporary way. It’s not really about changing them but to think, instead of an alternative state or reality, of an alternative set of rules.

Being a perfectionist doesn’t mean (at least to me), looking for what is missing or looking for mistakes, it’s about looking for perfection. While creating I think it’s normal, even useful to see those mistakes in order to “repair” them, but while not creating, but observing, while part of a perfectionist according to common conceptions, is not only seeing mistakes everywhere, but seeing perfection.

Not everything is perfect.

While it may seem that I’m a “everything is perfect” guy, I’m not. Not everything is perfect. In fact, most things are not. Yet I can find sets of rules that make some things perfect. Like those people who say nature is perfect by itself, I agree with them. And yet, to the eco-friendly people, who believe we are endagering the planet, the ecosystem and ourselves, I still believe the human being is a perfect creation.

That’s where I’m aiming with this, too. I believe some perfection resides in imperfect creations. The human body is perfect being imperfect. Because we need to consider the human race, the world as a whole and everything. It might sound creepy, ugly or just plain cold, but I believe than even with all the ways a human could die (at 100 years old, 50, 30, 2…), it’s perfect being that way.

Can you imagine how bad it would be to actually know when you’re going to die? Or is that more perfect? I’m open to thoughts on the matter as this is just how I see perfection and myself as a perfectionist. Do you think I’m right? Or that I’ just a positive “everything’s great” guy?

What is “perfectionism” to you?

It’s been a while since I don’t publish a word on this blog. But hey, I have my reasons (getting accepted on my country’s best university is one =) ). Since I found myself letting my blog die slowly being forgotten and losing readers, I just needed to relaunch it, let it reborn or something with re- on it, because it wouldn’t be the first time. Yet, it would be the best, so far.

And what’s new? A completely new design, more elegant and stylish (what a word, huh?). What else? SEVEN new articles for you to read and pay my blog bills (that is, letting you starve from my content). Now, after the break, the list of articles that will be published in the next 6 days (7 days, total), one each day, first hour in the morning.

1. What is “perfectionism” to you?
2. Creativity: it’s about taking care of your ideas, concentrating and time
3. Why do you feel bad
4. Knowledge: from observation to ideas
5. Remembering with sounds and smells
6. 5 rules to become a decent liar
7. Creativity boost! Answer: questions!

On the other hand, my new schedule for posting articles will be once a week, on Tuesdays, only. So you’ll need to wait like a week after these 7 articles. Is that ok? I hope so…

The new, redesigned, Mathias’ Blog