Category: General

For those used to playing massively multiplayer online games, you know that when you create your character, you often have to choose a class and then a further specialization to determine your role and play style within the game. For example, within the World of Warcraft, I had a character who was a paladin class that specialized in protection. Thus his role as a Protection Paladin was as a “tank” at the front lines, often taking the brunt of the enemy attacks for his party. What a lot of people don’t realize though is that just like these games you can actually determine your “class” and “specialization” within life itself using a personality profile system such as the ones created by Isabel Briggs Myers and David Keirsey (and often easily determined via a personality profile service). For example, during World War II, Isabel and her mother created what is called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment so as to help women find suitable jobs that matched their personalities.

What’s important to realize in understanding this though is that your “role” or personality type is not a job type by any means. For example, you don’t take a personality test with an outcome of being told “Your optimal role in life is a WEB DESIGNER!” Instead think of your role as actions that you naturally gravitate towards so as to truly express your authentic self within life, thus making you feel truly alive and meaningful. It’s important to realize this because when you first glance at your optimal job types that match your role, they may seem completely different and without any similarities on the surface. Once you fully understand your role in life though, you’ll see that the jobs recommended for you are actually very similar below the surface because the actions that are performed within them are very similar in nature with a common pattern or theme to them. For example, some of the recommended career paths for my personality type are as a writer, counselor, teacher, psychologist, psychiatrist, musician, or clergy. Again, on the surface these careers couldn’t seem farther apart, yet with understanding they are very very similar in nature,  particularly because of what they achieve as an outcome for the individual working within that career.

I’ve been off the grid for a while. I needed time to reflect and think about what I’ve been doing with my life and what I’ve been doing with this website as well. In effect, am I still going in the direction I want to be going in? During this downtime, I’ve been anything but inactive. I actually got a full time retail job about 15 minutes walking distance from my house. It doesn’t pay much but it covers my basic bills and my other co-workers are some of the nicest and most caring people I’ve ever worked with in my life. The work itself is pretty intense, leaving you exhausted at the end of the day and wiped out at the end of the week (both physically and mentally). That said, I do love the social interaction with the customers we get, as I have a naturally affinity for helping people out.

Over the past couple of weeks though, I’ve been getting more and more frustrated with myself because I just haven’t had any considerable time to research my passion and purpose. Don’t get me wrong, I’m always jotting down notes and thoughts but I really haven’t had that much time to reflect and think about them in detail, primarily because I’ve been so exhausted. That all changed yesterday when I decided to finally read a book that I’ve been wanting to read for quite some time. The book is entitled The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Reading the first few chapters at night, before I went to bed, got me quite interested and in the morning I proceeded to voraciously read the rest of the book. By the time I was done, something noticeable had changed within me.

You see The Alchemist is a fable about a boy who in search of a treasure in a distant land discovers a more important treasure within himself. What might sound strange though is that I was already familiar with the story before I even began reading it. Not because I had heard of the story from someone else but because the story is the same story of my own life. And even more so, the universal truths relayed within the story are many of which I firmly believe in. So if anything, the book for me was a validation and an iconic reminder of what I had been doing my entire life already, particularly the last ten years of it.

Later that evening, after my wife returned from work, I described the impact the book had on me and what it made me realize with my life. Strange but true, I’ve had a vision of creating something since I was in my early twenties, after having read The Matador Trilogy by Steve Perry. Within this vision, I saw myself creating a community of people who collectively are striving to bring about a positive change to the world we live within. Similar to the characters within The Matador Trilogy, this community of people are striving to tear down antiquated beliefs and systems that are beginning to rip apart our society and build new ones which can restore our humanity. At the time of the vision in my early twenties, I just thought it was a childish fantasy but now looking back on the last twenty five years of my life since that vision, I realize I’ve been trying to accomplish this without even knowing it.

For example, during my time building video game communities online, I always built them upon a positive cultural foundation. In effect, I wanted them to be havens apart from the stereotypical negative culture that 80% or more of the community normally proliferated. And amazing enough, with the help of some close friends, we were able to pull this off and create positive and caring environments of learning and knowledge sharing that many of us still fondly remember to this very day. But simply put, even though at the time I was doing it for fun, deep within me my heart was naturally doing it for a specific reason, almost as though it was an experiment or test for something greater to come.

And yet in reviewing this all last night and this morning, one important question remained for me. During a lot of my online community building, where I built communities to share my video game knowledge and experience, I did so because I had first achieved a sense of mastery and awareness of the game. The question that was left unanswered though was what mastery and awareness did I have to share in real life? It obviously didn’t have anything to do with my technical or design skills (i.e. web design, coding, scripting, etc) because there are a ton of people out there who have a greater mastery of those skills than I do. No, whatever my mastery and awareness is, it must come naturally to me. And that’s when I realized my mastery and awareness is self-identity, something which is a prevalent problem with many people today, particularly the youth of the world. And again a perfect example of this mastery is the enjoyment I received in helping people with their website branding and identity. In fact, many people whom I helped often expressed excitement and joy after clarifying their identity and differentiation as a business. And even from my perspective, I enjoyed this identity “discovery” aspect of the work much more so than the actual designing and building of the website.

So now that I know what I’ve naturally been progressing towards my entire life, now comes the challenge of how to get there and manifest this vision of mine into a reality. For now, the natural thing to do is to continue what I started on this website and share my thoughts with others but aimed more specifically at self-discovery because if I can help even just one other person with their own self-discovery and passion then it will all be worth it. In light of this, I’ve changed my site byline from “Life in Design” back to my previous mantra of “Connect. Empower. Inspire.” I’ve done this for two reasons. The first reason being that before you can connect, empower, and inspire others, you must first connect, empower, and inspire yourself. Secondly while we are all striving to “design” a better life for ourselves, we must realize it is more about chipping away the layers to reveal what’s at our heart, rather than reshaping what we naturally already are.

In closing, below is a short snippet from The Alchemist that I think is a great metaphor for the life and journey of self-discovery that I have experienced thus so far.

The desert was all sand in some stretches, and rocky in others. When the caravan was blocked by a boulder, it had to go around it; if there was a large rocky area, they had to make a major detour. If the sand was too fine for for the animals’ hooves, they sought a way where the sand was more substantial. In some places, the ground was covered with the salt of dried-up lakes. The animals balked at such places, and the camel drivers were forced to dismount and unburden their charges. The drivers carried the freight themselves over such treacherous footing, and then reloaded the camels. If a guide were to fall ill or die, the camel drivers would draw lots and appoint a new one.

But all this happened for one basic reason: no matter how many detours and adjustments it made, the caravan moved toward the same compass point. Once obstacles were overcome, it returned to its course, sighting on a star that indicated the location of the oasis. When the people saw that star shining in the morning sky, they knew they were on the right course toward water, palm trees, shelter, and other people.

I grew up immersed within nature. It was an incredible feeling because I felt like I knew who I was and how I fit into the greater scheme of things on this planet.

As I got older though and started joining the work force of society, that naturalness quickly evaporated to be replaced by a feeling of totally unnaturalness and alienation. For a short time, I was perplexed as to why business worked so unnaturally, yet eventually I just accepted it as “the way things were and had always been”. Today, however, I realize that this isn’t the case. We as a society have created this unnaturalness and alienation around us. And so too can we as a collective create a better and more natural future for ourselves once again, if we so choose to do so.

And you realize that during a moment
where they experienced a grievance
that anyone in this audience could imagine possibly
encountering or feeling themselves,
they felt alienated.

Jared Cohen, Thinking and Doing Around Radicalization

Isn’t alienation at the root of so many of our problems? Alienated individuals make an alienated society. And we are that — alienated from nature, from the Great Spirit of life, from our own souls and their gifts, and from each other. Isn’t there at the base of apathy, at the root of every mean and violent act, an alienated individual who feels powerless and adrift? Isn’t so much of the hostility we see reflected in our youth today simply a cry, a scream that says, “I can’t do it. I can’t express. I can’t make a constructive difference”? Perhaps as a society, we are better to encourage and develop the good within young people than to concentrate on answering their cries with greater punishment. People are good and will do good if they think they can. Youth look to their elders for the way, but they will not be deceived. There is no substitute for authentic examples.

Laurence G. Boldt, Zen and the Art of Making a Living

Lao Tzu believed that when people do not have a sense of power they become resentful and uncooperative. Individuals who do not feel personal power feel fear. They fear the unknown because they do not identify with the world outside of themselves; thus their psychic integration is severely damaged and they are a danger to their society. Tyrants do not feel power, they feel frustration and impotency. They wield force, but it is a form of aggression, not authority. On closer inspection, it becomes apparent that individuals who dominate others are, in fact, enslaved by insecurity and are slowly and mysteriously hurt by their own actions. Lao Tzu attributed most of the world’s ills to the fact that people do not feel powerful and independent.

R.L.Wing, The Tao of Power

For me, figuring out my weaknesses is just as important as figuring out my strengths because I believe that our strengths come from our weaknesses and our weaknesses come from our strengths. In effect, you can’t have one without the other because they work off of each other. So instead of trying to hide from or ignore your weaknesses, so as to avoid believing you’re weak or imperfect, you should strive to be aware of them and understand how they relate to your strengths. In doing so, it gives you the awareness and understanding of how to keep yourself balanced, no matter what life might throw at you.

Without a doubt though, it is a constant and difficult challenge to maintain this balance. Some days you’ll feel so strong that your weaknesses won’t be anywhere in sight. Other days, you’ll feel completely overwhelmed by your weaknesses with your strengths nowhere in sight. This is the natural cyclic nature of life though, this ebb and flow or ups and downs. Again don’t try to be surprised or upset by it, expect that it will happen from time to time (which in itself is hard to do) and strive to do your best work on your strong days, letting your weak days be a time for rest and reflection (i.e. a time to get away from it all).

Now for myself, I want to cover my weaknesses in two ways: intensity and lacking. Think of a weakness of intensity as something like Superman slapping a friend on the back because he told a great joke and sending that friend flying 100 yards across a field in the process because he forgot his own strength. Now a weakness of lacking is kind of the opposite of this in the sense that a man may have barely any strength at all, so he’s weak in being able to do things like carrying heavy objects or even defending himself.

Weaknesses of Intensity

• Desire for creative self expression which can become scattered and lack direction because I often have so many creative ideas I’d like to work upon, I’m not sure where to start.
• Desire for the simple luxuries of life because my family wasn’t well off growing up as a kid.
• Desire for recognition and authority of achievements because I often find it so difficult to communicate my strengths which is crucial if you want to get hired or employed.
• Desire for personal freedom and change in my work because it lets me fully utilize all of my talents in my work and lets me take risks experimenting with new ideas.

Now to balance out these intensities, I need to do the following. I need to have a creative outlet that let’s me express myself authentically. Right now, this website and journal are letting me do this to a degree but I’d like to elevate this further in the future. With regards to luxuries, I need to be spartan and frugal, realizing that some of my best ideas and most memorably experiences have often come from limited interactions (i.e. limit yourself to expand your possibilities). As for recognition, I need to be self-confident in my talents, even if others can’t fully see them yet, but still work on constructive ways of communicating them better. Finally, with regards to freedom, I need to be more flexible in accepting “conventional” work at times because it may propagate an unconventional idea or interaction that could lead to a new experience or opportunity in life.

Weaknesses of Lacking

• Lack the ability to be balanced, cooperative, and diplomatic because I see issues that are so common sense to me that I often blurt them out without much consideration for others.
• Lack the ability to be silent because I feel I can help, so I’m very vocal in trying to problem solve issues.

Now to balance out these lackings, I need to do the following. I need to be more cooperative and diplomatic in my interactions, using empathy to put myself in the shoes of others which will help me soften my blunt words, so they become more tactful. I also need to learn to keep my mouth shut and instead just to listen, observe, and understand. This is critical in understanding the whole of a system. In effect, while I can learn a lot by interacting with others, I learn a lot more by just sitting in the background listening and observing.

My Past Self

What I find really intriguing about this weakness analysis on myself is that I actually used to be much better at overcoming my weaknesses in my past because I was much more of an introvert then. In effect, my shyness forced me to keep silent and it also forced me to go along with the rest of the crowd, thus being much more cooperative and diplomatic.

Ever since around 2001 though, when I started realizing my true talents and potential, everything started getting out of balance. In effect, the more successful I became, the worse I got out of balance. What’s hilarious about this though is that the company I was within experienced this exact same thing as well. The more successful they became, the more they got out of balance and spiralled downhill as a company, until they eventually imploded in 2002.

Creating My Future Self Presently

What I also find really intriguing about this though is that my ideal future self is something very similar to what I’d like do within a company right now. In effect, my optimal role seems to be one in which I’m an advisor, consultant, coach, or mentor within a company whereby I’m not controlling people or telling them what to do, so much as I’m helping to teach them how to achieve things on their own. I do this by helping them to see things around them and in themselves that they may not have seen before (i.e. making the intangible tangible), thus making them more aware and responsible for themselves and others around them.

There’s a few quotes within John Thackara’s In The Bubble book that gave me another important realization with regards to my purpose and how I seem to help people the most (yet have such a hard time describing it on a resume or bio).

We’re so flooded by noise that it’s hard to understand what’s going on. True, we have learned to filter out noise and distraction, but in so doing we have also constrained our capacity to reflect on and make sense of the bigger picture.

In order to do things differently, to reassert some kind of control over the evolution of events, we need to design ways to see things differently. Tomorrow’s literacies therefore need to be process and systems literacies.

Our world is filled with representations of invisible or complex phenomena. But most of them have been made and used by specialists as objects of research. So the design challenge described in this chapter has a second aspect: how to deploy new representations in such a way that they influence wider groups of people.

Although information overload is frequently discussed in the media — which helped cause it — our delimma is not that we receive too much information. We don’t receive anywhere near the quantity of data it takes to overload our neurons; our minds are capable of processing and analyzing many gigabits of data per second — a lot more data than any of today’s supercomputers can process and act on in real time. We feel flooded because we’re getting information unfiltered, unsorted, and unframed. We lack ways to select what’s important. The design task is to make information digestible, not to keep it out.

Simply put, I seem to have this knack for seeing the intangible and helping to make it tangible. For example, I have this ability to see the ebb and flow of a business, both internally and externally, as a whole system (or ecosystem). It’s why I seem to be so effective at defining processes and standards within a business, as well as defining the identity and culture of it as well. It’s also why I’m so fascinated with figuring out new ways of socially collaborating and interacting together, both offline and online (i.e. business organization, MMOs, CMSs, etc).

This is also why I’m so frustrated at trying to find work that can make use of this talent. For example, in a recent interview, someone told me that I might be better suited working in Human Resources. That to me would be like chopping off one of my arms because it only lets me utilize half of my talent. Why? Because when your talent is working in systems or more appropriately ecosystems, it involves working with both living and nonliving elements. Thus only working in Human Resources would “cage” me within human (living) interactions. Yet for me to work effectively from a whole systems approach, I need to work and immerse myself in all elements of it, no matter if it’s people, hardware, or software, because they are all connected.

Hilariously enough, this same interviewer proved this point to me. He indicated that the job position required work that related to “marketing”. When he described the details though, it sounded like user interface design and development.  When I indicated this, he agreed somewhat but elaborated that the purpose of the “interface” was to communicate and be a method of “interaction” between their customers and the company which is what marketing does. A radical thought to me at the moment but now it makes perfect sense.

All said and done now, my current challenge is how to effectively communicate this talent of mine easily, preferably within a visual way. I’ve got some ideas, based upon some previous research I’ve done in the past but I’ll have to play around with them before I can add them to my portfolio.

I’ve been extremely busy the past couple of weeks but I can’t let it go to my head. Even though I’ve been productive, coming up with amazing solutions that I thought weren’t even possible a few weeks back, I still feel as though that this is only a distraction from something greater that I’m supposed to creating and working on.

I mentioned before that I keep seeing all of these amazingly talented individuals and yet, like myself, their full potential does not seem to be realized yet, even though their talents may be readily visible. The only way I can explain this would be like seeing Superman using his powers to deliver pizzas (i.e. “Delivered anywhere, worldwide, and always served piping hot!”). It just seems like such a waste of our true potential.

Then again, I guess it’s better to be doing something, rather than nothing. The trick is, obviously, to make sure that you don’t lose your awareness and focus along the way. That you don’t get so caught up in what you’re doing that it becomes more important than yourself or the creative exploratory journey that you’re undertaking to reveal your true purpose. So yes, it’s better to be creating something rather than nothing. Yet still it’s important to always push yourself towards a purpose of creating something that truly expresses your authentic whole self and utilizes all of your powers within the process of its creation.

I’ve been playing and working with the Web since the first web browser, Mosaic, came out in 1993. I even remember nostalgically finding a copy of the 0.9 beta version of it years later on floppy disk.

What I find frustrating though is that even after years of accumulating knowledge, expertise, and experience, people within the web industry for the most part today are still treated like a joke. For example, I remember dealing with huge global clients around 1999 and their product websites were often a complete afterthought to them (i.e. “Oh geez. We need a website too. Can you get that up by next week?”).

Today with the world living, playing, learning, and working on the Web and online social interaction being such an important aspect of our lives, you’d think that people in the Web industry would finally get some respect and recognition for what they’ve been doing all these years but it’s still completely the opposite. Even though web design and development has gotten more complex, clients often expect developers to do more with much, much less.

This is why, more than anything, I’ve gotten out of doing freelance client work because very few people understand and value my expertise and knowledge. In effect, web design is not about the individual pieces (i.e. linking simple web pages or documents) but the interaction of those pieces as a whole on a variety of levels which is why I think my systems thinking comes in so handy in this regard. Web design is branding & identity, marketing, graphical design, interactive design, usability, information architecture, community building, front-end programming, back-end programming, and more. This is why it’s usually almost impossible to find one individual who can cover all of these areas well.

For example, the typical web designer today that helps most small businesses can achieve so much because of the power of content management systems which lets them focus more on the front-end versus the back-end. Even just focusing on the front-end though is hardly simple. For example, when I was doing freelance work, I expected most of my clients to already have a solid brand and identity, as well as their content copy figured out with at least some logical structure to it. This would at least give me something to work with (i.e. Jerry McGuire’s “Help me, help you!”), allowing me to build a great flowing story-like interactive experience on their website. But even those basic expectations of branding and copy were almost never met and more often than not, clients expected me to come up with their branding & identity, as well as to help them with their copy.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I couldn’t do this. It was more the frustration at the context and scope of the project in relation to the quality of work that I could get out of it. For example, if the client’s needs were simple and they had a basic but usable logo, as well as at least some usable content, I often produced work that they were often extremely happy with, yet from my perspective I wouldn’t show it on my portfolio because it just didn’t “cut it” as quality work to me. Eventually after years of doing this and clients expecting more in less time and with less pay, I said enough. I don’t want to be a machine that produces a quantity of mediocre work. I want to be a human being who can express his authentic self through the quality of his creative work.

Amazingly enough, after I stopped doing freelance work and started doing work for myself, the quality of my work shot up dramatically and my knowledge, particularly with regards to front-end script-based interactivity, seemed to skyrocket. It’s because I finally had the time to experiment and play with crafting  something that I myself would truly want to use. And if you only know one thing about me, realize that I am harder on and expect more of myself than anyone else. Thus if I’m using something, I expect it to be of quality work, being both highly functional and highly usable.

All said and done though, web design to me at its core still has very little to do with technology. It’s simply about people, relationships, and communications. For example, I’ve seen websites that while they may not have been visually beautiful, they were still amazing because their functionality and usability truly allowed people to connect easily and interact with one another. At the same time, I’ve seen simply gorgeous websites that were completely frustrating to use because they lacked the functionality and usability to let people connect easily. Thus more often than not people would just leave in frustration, not even bothering to contact the company because they couldn’t even find a way to contact them on their website. Sad but true.

This is exactly why I’m looking for full time work right now, while I continue to do my own personal work on the side. I want to find a company that truly cares about people both internally and externally. Thus they need to truly care about their employees and give them the time and space to create quality work which they can be proud of. At the same time, they should truly care about their customers and, more importantly, the local community around them. In effect, the more powerful they become, the more they should humbly give back in thanks for where they’ve gotten. And if you think this is a pipe dream, no there are local companies out there like this. Alas my goal is more difficult because I’d like to find a company that can not only utilize my web expertise but also my video game and community expertise as well, particularly done in such a way that the company is creating a positive social impact and change within the world, even if just on a local level.

All said and done though, I could have given up on web design years ago and I often thought about it. But still in the back of my head, I always knew that my knowledge and expertise were valuable to me in some way, even if on a personal level, because I still feel like I have something I still need to authentically create and express online with regards to social change. And in some strange way, I feel that when I discover what this is, it will make use all of my knowledge and expertise over the years in a unifying harmonistic way (i.e. story writing, web design, drawing, composing music). In effect, I feel it will a website that will express an important story of some kind through words, visual imagery, and even music on something of social importance. Again what this will be, I still don’t know at this time but deep within me is this strong undeniable emotional feeling that it still needs to be expressed in some way.

Thus as the saying goes, it’s not what life gives you, it’s what you do with it that matters. And if anything, I’m actually glad at the frustrations I’ve had with some clients over the years because they’ve helped me to understand and get closer to what I truly want to be doing. Without them, without that conflict, I wouldn’t be who I am today and I wouldn’t know so passionately about where I want to be going.

One of the most beautiful aspects of systems thinking is that it applies to so many aspects of life. At times though, this ability to learn so much from one thing can be frustrating, particularly when it comes to choosing a particular avenue to explore and experiment with systems thinking.

Two such avenues though have always been dominant within my life. One being systems thinking as it applies to organizational design, particularly startup businesses, and the other being systems thinking as it applies to game design, particularly massively multiplayer games. While people who know me know my interest in both of these areas, what they don’t know is that I’ve been looking at way to merge both of these avenues into one for at least a few years. For me the reasons are obvious, why spend years of research in one area (i.e. games design for entertainment), when I can spend years of research on something that merges both into something much more meaningful (i.e. playful social systems designed for social change).

To understand what I mean, imagine a fusional mix of Jane McGonigal’s Gaming Can Make A Better World, Flickr’s evolutionary origins, Kickstarter, and The Social Network, all rolled into one. Again for those who know me, I’ve hinted at this somewhat in the past when talking about my idea of “connected communities” which arose out of my frustrations of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. We, as a society, need to collectively evolve our intelligence and awareness if we’re going to be able to handle the challenges coming our way. And no I don’t mean a new way of organizing government or businesses, I mean a new way of self-organizing “we the people” to collectively tackle problems head on without the need for centralized command and control type systems that are simply so unreliable within the rapidly changing and volatile times we live in.

Simply put, we need news ways of socially interacting that are more than just individually focused (i.e. Facebook), as this just mirrors the same frustration within massively multiplayer games that follow this same individualistic pattern (typically theme park MMOs). We need systems that give us new ways of interacting as collective groups, rather than just as individuals. So instead of creating social systems that relay our individual awareness (i.e. Facebook), we need systems that relay our collective or group awareness. Yet at the same time, this needs to be done in such a way that the system is sustainable (i.e. decentralized) and simple to use (i.e. emergence-based with simple interactions).

If you’re wondering if I’ve magically come up with such a system, sorry to disappoint you but no I haven’t, even though I do get the occasional insight and realization that evolves my scope of understanding on tackling the subject. For example, this morning I played around with some conceptual ideas of a game-like social system that utilizes “energy” to achieve things within it. This energy is either time-based or money-based and it allows you to use abilities like “attacking” or “defending” a task / quest / cause, while also being able to “heal” or “empower” other individuals working on that task. So again, replicating elements that we see within games but using them in such a way that we can self-organize and overcome heroic challenges in real life (rather than just overcoming virtual heroic challenges and quests within games).

So for me, my dream job is no longer working for an open, sharing, and caring business company or game development company. It’s working within an eclectic company that is a hybrid of both, that’s looking at new ways of developing decentralized social systems that help people to interact within new, sustainable, and enjoyable ways.

I’m noticing another pattern and this one is really scaring the shit out of me. I’m seeing a world full of amazingly talented and creative people, yet many of them feel like they need something outside of themselves to be complete, whole, and creatively successful. In effect, we’ve been so persuaded by outside influences (i.e. advertising, family, friends, etc) over the years, that we are actually believing it to the point that we feel like we’re worthless without some “external” thing to support us.

Part of the problem here is that again we’ve bred this culture of instant gratification in ourselves and thus we expect creative success to be immediate (i.e. within a month). Yet this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Creativity and design is an iterative process of many layers (applying and/or removing). Sure you may see the creative emergence of someone thinking “Wow, look at they did. I can do that too!” But what you don’t often see is the months or years of work building a creative foundation that slowly but naturally elevated them to success. So sure inspiration is great for making you realize something and giving you the courage to step out on that limb but persistence and dedication is what is needed for you to achieve your dreams.

Another problem that relates to this is that people seem to think that if they aren’t making money off of their creativity, then there is no point in being creative. This is a surefire way to kill your creative spirit and your soul in the process. Be real creative in everything you do, no matter if it’s for professional or personal reasons. Actually, as I’ve seen in the past, often times when you are doing something creative for yourself, that’s when it often evolves and leads into something for others. In effect, when you put the time, effort, and care into creating something worthwhile for yourself that’s when others see how great is and want it for themselves as well. So if anything, follow your personal creative passions, even if no one sees what you’re doing initially because not only does it allow you to creatively express your authentic self but it could lead to a creative emergence of something that others are attracted to as well.

Here’s some quick examples of what I mean by the above within my own life. When I was younger, I used to be amazing at drawing. Later in my early twenties, I composed my own music. Years later getting into my mid life, while I felt I would like to get back into drawing and music, I always felt like 1) I wasn’t good enough or 2) why bother because I couldn’t make any money off of it. Now I realize how stupid this thinking was for me. I don’t care how good I am now. I only care that I’ve found other mediums to express myself creatively, even if only for myself initially. Over time, when I feel like I’ve mastered it enough, then I’ll probably start sharing it with others and who knows what will arise out of it. So now, I’m starting to play around with composing music again. Soon, I hope to start drawing as well. Again, I know it will be an iterative experience that will take time but the benefit is that it lets me keep my creative and authentic energies flowing and also adds diversity to my life that could lead to the emergence of something down the road.