Creatives I admire

One Breath Around The World

You better sit down for this one… absolutely breathtaking.

A new (12 min) short film by Guillaume Néry.

If what you’re doing isn’t working

After all. It is a new year. So much this. [via Seth Godin]:

If what you’re doing isn’t working

Perhaps it’s time to do something else.

Not a new job, or a new city, but perhaps a different story.

A story about possibility and sufficiency. A story about connection and trust. A story about for and with, instead of at or to.

But if that story isn’t getting you where you need to go, then what’s it for?

It’s entirely possible that the story we tell ourselves all day every day is true and accurate and useful, the very best representation of the world as it actually is.

It’s possible, but vanishingly unlikely.

If you can’t solo bootstrap it, get some help to install a new story. It’s worth it.

Photo by Reuben Juarez on Unsplash

Here we go again

Seth Godin is my Monday morning hero:

“Here we go again”

We all say that to ourselves.

The question is: when do you say it?

Do you say it when you’re being rejected, failing, stuck, panicked, overwhelmed or alone?

Or do you say it when you’re engaged, winning, changing things and in the groove?

Because the more you rehearse this feeling, the more it’s going to happen.

We get what we expect.

And we expect what we get.

The easiest way to change this cycle is to alter the scale we play in. If you keep failing at the big stuff, it’s worth honing the habit of succeeding at the small stuff first. And if you’re finding yourself in a rut, a cycle of failure, walk away from that series of projects and find a new field to plant your seeds in.

Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash

In order that people may be happy

In 1851 John Ruskin* said:

In order that people may be happy at work, these three things are needed:
They must be fit for it, they must not do too much of it, and they must have a sense of success in it.

*John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist.