Finding Your Inner Voice

Creativity can manifest itself through living in a good marriage or having a committed relationship. It can be the right way to raise your kids or caring for others. It means being yourself…whoever that might be.

Albert Einstein said it best when speaking about creativity. “Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid.”

We all have it. We just need to find it. If one looks at creativity not just in terms of the arts, music, crafts and all of its many manifestations but far beyond that, it is another world welcoming us to explore. Creativity can be found in our ordinary, often times mundane acts of living.

It means creating a lifestyle that embraces all that is important to you, your soul and your inner cravings for your purpose in being alive. It means living by those principles that define who you are as a person, a spouse, a lover, a parent, a guardian, and a member of the human race. Living creatively can and should be your motivation for personal evolution, growth, learning and therefore, thriving in a complicated world.

Finding our inner voice is different for each one of us.  It is what we, not others, want us to be. Too often we carry the baggage of our parent’s expectations or the well-meaning but tempered advice of teachers and coaches. Often times we have sub-consciously learned to be what others expect of us…not how we truly feel inside. As a result, we often downplay or disconnect from those parts of us that are truly unique to just us.

Businesses have been doing this for hundreds of years. Over the centuries, they have failed to grasp huge opportunities for change and innovation. An attachment to old habits, greying assumptions and fat around the waist have clouded their perception of change all around them. Then occasionally some business comes along like Apple or Netflix or Fitbit or GoPro to challenge the status quo and cause massive upheavals.

As with any responsible enterprise it is our duty to find what it is that interests us the most. We must listen to our inner voice and answer its calling. To do this we must learn how to support our creativity. That means to take the time to daydream, doodle, imagine, and ponder those many ‘what if’s’ that seem to hang around  the edges of our consciousness. Life-changing habits come from thoughts and energies beyond that which we normally access during our daily lives.

Then we must take those thoughts, ideas, concepts, and ‘what ifs’ and put them into concrete form or action. The tragedy here is not to try and fail but to do nothing at all. Each of us has an intuitive nature. We must harness the energy of and the power of that intuitive self in order to become limitless in our inner exploration.

You must first accept where you are in life and never regret the journey you took to get there. You should slow down and smell the flowers. That means eliminating toxic people and situations that do nothing but harm your self-worth. Practice the art of mindful living and appreciating your good fortune when intuition comes into your life.

It means breaking away from centuries-old assumptions, questioning old habits that hold us back and honestly looking deep within ourselves for the truth there. Creativity is a whole body and mind experience. It is a way of life not just an idea or an ambitious goal. It is preparing ourselves mentally and physically for the journey deep within ourselves that reveal truths about us we never knew. It is a mind-set that in turn is a road map that in turn is a guide to eternal truths…our truths about who we are and what we can become if we so desire.

Welcome to your inner journey. It’s going to be a wonderful, at times confusing, and ultimately satisfying trip. It’s better to jump on that train now than to wait at the station for another-life to arrive.

• Credit must be given to the following authors who wrote articles in ‘The Edge’ Magazine, June, 2016 on this subject matter. Theresa Nutt, Alley Brook, Jeanne Henderson, Lisa Sellman and Nick Seneca Jankel.

First Rock & Roll ... Then What?

I have to extend my thanks once again to my coffee clutch friend. He’s the one with curious insight and probing questions that always cause my mind to go wandering. This time it was an innocuous observation that throughout history we have always experienced brief periods of extraordinary creativity. Turns out some of those life-changing events took place during my watch. His comments got me to thinking. He was right. Yet without focused attention I probably would have just taken for granted some of those earth-shaking times I lived through.

We’re all aware from history books of the Industrial Revolution and that period when notables such as Alexander Graham Bell invented the lightbulb and the Wright Brothers conquered flight. There have been revolutions of many ilk’s and forms. There have been mass migrations and the cessation of civilizations. Some inventions have changed our lives for the better and others have caused it great harm.

In the early 1950’s I was only vaguely aware of the advent of television and the infiltration of music into my life. The subtle, almost innocuous penetration of music by way of the transistor radio and then audio tapes and CDs continued throughout my lifetime.

By the mid-50s that mental and emotional penetration began to take shape in the form of Rock and Roll and all of its extraneous manifestations. Rock and Roll was the eternal elixir for many of us. It was an imagination-induced formula that led to all kinds of mental meanderings and wishful thinking. Most of it harmless.

Like a fast moving stream of consciousness, this new kind of music flowed and dispersed and re-converged in many forms; pop, country, folk, folk-rock, country-rock, metal, heavy metal, and so forth. The styles, idioms and messages were almost too numerous and convoluted to pin down. The only constant was a tug at our emotional minds and accepting hearts.

As earth-shaking as Rock and Roll was to our musical consciousness, the Sixties proved even more disruptive and revolutionary. Revolution was the code word for changes in attitudes toward women’s rights, our sexuality, challenging the political establishment, civil rights, and more. There were life-changing seismic changes in our society that could not be turned back and are still felt even today.

In retrospect, it changed me into the seeker I am today. Like some innocent unnoticed incident that began to build up over time, it gradually morphed into a mindset and a focus, an interest and a passion, an observation and a conclusion; none of which was dependent on the prevailing wisdom of the times or mindset of the masses.

Then that cloak of many different colors was further enhanced by the new economy and its challenges along with benefits. The new economy, fueled by the internet and computer technology, caused another seismic shift in the way we thought about and conducted business…and our lives.

The code word here was ‘the new economy’ or ‘fast company.’ The second coming of the internet age proved just as grandiose, overblown, exaggerated, and truly ground-shifting and many iterations of all those clichés just listed.

• The internet was supposed to create a ‘new economy.’ That never happened or at least not in the reiteration that was projected.

• There would be a new world community. While it’s true that small select groups with similar interests have found one another. On the whole, the world is still a broad and vary diverse gathering of dissimilar individuals.

• The digital age would make us all smarter. Not necessarily. It just means that we get to exercise our fingertips each day and get easily distracted.

• Digital technologies will narrow the wealth gap. It may have done other things but narrowing the disparity between the haves and the have-nots has not been one of the results.

Along with those technological changes, the political climate also began to change from its first hint of disservice in the Sixties to the full blown cynicism it sometimes experiences today. On a more personal note, the publishing world I’m currently enmeshed in is changing on an almost daily basis. And the changes just keep chugging along.

What the future holds for me (considering Moore’s law of change) continues to be a mystery slowly unraveling itself one day at a time. So much of it is in my head and what I choose to embrace there. What do I write?  How do I get published? How do I let the world know I exist?

Where do I go from here?

It means continuing to share my kid’s world and understand my grandchildren’s world as it evolves and changes. Ultimately for me it means respecting the past while embracing the present and future…and waiting to see where it takes me.