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Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008In the end, we arrive at a kind of model of the artist’s world, and that model is that there exist other, higher planes of reality, about which we can prove nothing, but from which arise our lives, our work, and our art. These spheres are trying to communicate with ours. When Blake said Eternity is in love with creations of time, he was referring to those planes of pure potential, which are timeless, placeless, spaceless, but which long to bring their visions into being here, in this timebound, space-defined world.
The artist is the servant of that intention, those angels, that Muse. The enemy of the artist is the small-time Ego, which begets Resistance, which is the dragon that guards the gold. That’s why an artist must be a warrior and, like all warriors, artists over time acquire modesty and humility. They may, some of them, conduct themselves flamboyantly in public. But alone with their work they are chaste and humble. They know they are not the source of the creations they bring into being. They only facilitate. They carry. They are the willing and skilled instruments of the gods and goddesses they serve.
– Taken from “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield
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The Artist’s Life
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008Are you a born writer ? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace ? In the end the question can only be answered in action.
Do or don’t do it.
It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.
You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along the path back to God.
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.
– Taken from “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield
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High speed learning from Grand Prix driving
Thursday, April 10th, 2008You are driving too slowly. I want you to go faster.
I want you to go fast because speed will burn that fear out of you. Your fear keeps you stuck. You get up to your fear and then back off on the throttle. Your fear is still driving the car. That is why, when you get up to the fear, I want you to go full throttle.
You have to trust that there is a Grand Prix driver inside you. If you don’t go fast, you’ll never meet the driver inside you. I want you to push yourself, push that throttle, so the driver in you comes forward and takes over the car. If I let you go slowly, the coward in you is still driving the car. There is only one way the professional driver can come out and that is by pushing hard on the accelerator. When you go to full throttle, you have to trust that the professional racecar driver in you will take over.
– Except taken from “Before you quit your job” by Robert Kiyosaki
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Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
Thursday, March 6th, 2008“If you are not doing as well as you’d like, all that means is there’s something you don’t know.”
“The goal of creating wealth is not primarily to have a lot of money. The goal of creating wealth is to help you grow yourself into the best person you can possibly be.”
“Every master was once a disaster.”
“To get paid the best, you must be the best.”
– T. Harv Eker, “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind“
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Care, but not t-h-a-t much
Sunday, September 9th, 2007“Whenever a social interaction looms so large in your mind that you view it as watershed event in Western Civilization, you are in trouble. You’re caring too much and with that you lose the requisite detachment necessary for success.
There’s a prosaic saying that whenever a person is overcome with feelings, be it anger or desire, he or she “can’t see the forest for the trees”. Oddly, or maybe fittingly, when that happens you move in close that you might even swear, “There is no tree, only a knothole right here.”
In other words, what you must do is to train yourself to step back, so that you can see the pattern, relationships and interconnection of things.”
Excerpt taken from Negotiate This!: By Caring, but Not T-H-A-T Much
This not only applies in negotiation, but also in the endeavours we undertake. Do you sometimes suffer from mental blocks in your work, or the things you do ? I do. Besides the occasional perfectionism bout, I think one other reason is that I care too much for the outcome of my efforts. This excerpt is a stark reminder to me to care, but not that much.
Caring too much about the outcome will only impede progress because we are too afraid to try. We are forever aiming and aiming but never firing.
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