Author: Cherokee

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Embracing creativity over pursuing money.

It’s very easy to get caught up in the easy exchange of effort and time against a small amount of money or even a large one. But if we give in to the exchange, we also have to acknowledge that our time and energy are less precious than the money we receive.

We believe we have options most of the time, given the circumstances we experience.
Our heads are “swollen” with the illusion of material abundance and security and the only tangible power we believe we have comes in the form of money, a value that everyone seems to enjoy.

Most often, landlords would rather call the police if you’re not paying the rent,
rather than believe in the bigger picture of your creative schemes. “Money will come,
I just need time…“

We then doubt our vision and our creative process, because we know we are “capable” of holding a job which would take up most of our time and energy. If we give in to the idea of taking a job, it goes against everything our vision and belief system stands for. It also makes clearly abundant that seeking a job is a clear translation of the fact that doubt rules your life, rather than a confident belief that what you are striving for will make sense in the long run.

Although this “hold on until the storm passes” attitude, based of beliefs, also has downsides. And one doesn’t decide to be creative, they simply are. It would be far easier to chose a good University, passing a diploma, getting a “secure job” and working until you can kick your shoes off and live by the beach… But that doesn’t work for a creative. Being creative has downsides one must acknowledge and accept first and foremost, because they define how the individual functions. If I was to say “FLY!”, you’d look at me and think I was bonkers. This is because Flying isn’t part of how you function as a human-being. The distinction of how an individual functions also applies for people.
We are all singular and no two people are alike, even if they are identical twins!

As a creative, I often encounter a downside with jobs, but most specifically any action or intention to directly pursue money. I cannot keep it up, it saturates me beyond sanity. My creative juices stagnate and I feel numb. I start to see the cogs in the machine of how the business works and it gets as repetitive as Taylorism.

The blind pursuit for money isn’t sustainable for me. My nervous system seems to be a highly sensitive tool. One too sensitive for the ups and downs of the markets, the hustle and bustle of everyday jobs or anything which doesn’t require inner growth?

It does however require me seeking to understand things in my own way, at my own speed. Letting curiosity and interest drive me towards a personal comprehension of such and such focus, undisturbed by external deadlines or the possibility of being fired or expelled if the results I discover aren’t enough.

All of this means that, jumping through hoops to please a hierarchy doesn’t work well for creatives. Success and fame and anything related to “making it” in the world,
simply aren’t compatible with sensitive independents with the need to go at their own pace and discover the fruits of their own path. Pursuing money head on will simply result in being miserable. What creatives do need to pursue though is any form of quality creative outputs and developing inner confidence around their expressive skills.

As an introvert pointing out the difficulties I experience, agoraphobia comes to mind. Not that I am scared of anyone in particular, but that my nervous system gets triggered simply by going shopping for a couple of hours. I get home, put the shopping away and get into bed. My body has considerably tensed up since only a few hours prior when I was leaving the house. And this is a recurring pattern I get anytime there is a social event, or simply being seen outside the house. Hence why I run at night.

I am not able to “Force” things, and force an outcome to “become” what I want it to be.
To go out and get it, demands more energy than I have and I’ll end up sleeping more than regular people.

As much as this leads to energetic despair, there are solutions which can be remedied as long as we have freewill and the capacity to endure moments of doubt.

And where the hell is my freewill in all of this?!

Having a strong will, being told what to do can prove difficult. Though, there are two sides to not wanting to be told what to do. The first can stem from fear and often goes a little like “Because someone in my past has hurt me and somehow they were in a position to tell me what to do, and they abused that power. Now I don’t listen to anyone, because only I know best.” We can thank our parents we are so strong…
Or, we have a strong vision and from repeated experience we learn to cancel out the noise everyone around us tends to make while they project their fears, and negative experiences upon the outcome of our path (which is an entirely different one with different skills, different beliefs and different perceptions…).

Though having a strong will and being creative can seem incredible, this also has a downside. I cannot force myself if I don’t want to do something. As I’ve learn’t to listen to my higher self and to listen to my body and what I feel. I often find that doing something I don’t want to do, is more reflective of my intuition telling me not to do it, than it is me being lazy. But this leads to a larger questions…

Why don’t I want to do that specific thing? Is it a fear or actual conscious decision making? And Are my fears ruling the outcomes of what I am striving for?

A while back I read a good quote, and if I remember it correctly, it resembles something like:

” The need for radical independence comes from trauma/ or unrecognized hurt.”
I’m probably butchering the quote, but it goes something like this.

I have the knowledge in mind, I have the understanding, and I can take action upon what I want to do. Though when it comes to being consistent, my nervous system sends me to bed beyond stressed. It’s a nightmare. Being locked in a prison of beliefs I cannot seem to alter. And believe me, I spend all of my time focused on digging deep into my belief system to understand why I’m the way I am.

How can I change my physiological beliefs in order to change the outcome of how my body reacts? And is that even possible?

A few years back, I read about NLP and The game. The idea of practicing something entirely counter-intuitive gave the actors of the practice outcomes and entirely different results than they were initially getting had they not engaged in it. Though this begs more questions:

Do we have a natural, base-line state, which is normal and comfortable for us? A state, which, once we let go, is sustainable. Not a state which, if we stop maintaining effort, crumbles away and leaves us with what we initially had (which counters the concept of effort.).

In order to discover if I had a baseline state, I decided to go find my rock bottom,
which I like to call walking through fire. I wanted to find my lowest point to see what I was made of, and ultimately what would stick.Walking through fire has the characteristics of burning anything or anyone who isn’t supposed to be in our life.
This can also translate as a process in order to see who’s real or not. I believe everyone goes through it at some point. Though, I also believe that the earlier we go through it, the easier life is in the long run. Imagine learning to walk when you’re old as opposed to when you’re young, if you fall your bones would break and the recovery time would take forever. It’s better to discover if we have a soul early on in life rather than the 10 last minutes of our life. It makes for a more harmonious journey.

And even though it opens your eyes to what works and what doesn’t, thus cutting away the superficial unproductive relations, activities, paths, we once thought we needed, but no longer do. It opens up a more adapted, harmonious, peaceful approach to living our life, in sync with who we are.

To the external eye, the idea of narrowing down our opportunities and enlarging our depths in specific areas can seem near stupid. Especially in a world where More is admired, and less is just… well less. But this perception doesn’t work for everyone, especially those of us who enjoy more minimalist type lifestyles.

So what can we do to survive in a world which wants more, when what you create is enough, but not for others?

Hatching down on one’s vision and holding tight to that north star can do wonders.
Obviously, going down the rabbit hole and uncovering our Pandora’s box free’s us from living in illusion, but also disables the generic life “everyone” else seems to have. We become specialists about ourselves. After narrowing down what suits us better, doing anything and everything doesn’t fit anymore. This is a good thing. It’s like having a generic supermarket suit and a tailor made Italian suit. One fits perfectly and it even makes us feel good as a result, while the other makes us look shabby and out of place.
It comes down to consciousness.

With the narrowing of external opportunities, other dimensions open up within between our ears. Which, in contrast, opposes anything forced and unflowing. In other words, trimming off anything which doesn’t enable flow. Meaning, having the ultimate circumstances for peak condition productivity. So, cutting away the trivial stuff which doesn’t make 100% sense and align with who we are is actually good if we want to be productive.

I’m all for Forcing circumstances in my favor, but every time I do I seem to make my life worse. It’s when I don’t do anything at all and let life happen that my life gets better.
I.e. Letting go of control./ focussing on what I’m curious about/ doing what is natural for me.

All of this enables creativity… it helps to materialize / manifest circumstances. It also confirms that supporting my vision is more important than brute force, to confirm to others that I’m doing something. By investing time, energy and even money into creativity and believing in myself, I’m almost garanteed to succeed in creating an art through my prefered medium of expression.

Then it comes down to external factors. Other people’s expectancies and how much time you have to be in an illimited fram of mind without others enforcing what they want you to do on you. It comes down to protecting your personal space and attention.

In a recent interview by Tom Bilyeu, Seth Godin explains the lengths to which Miles Davis, a wildly reknown jazz artist, became bitter as he became a Rockstar.
In becoming so he could no longer simply create his art. The subtle nuance here is that, once you become a commodity, or once you become a product, your creativity is no longer demanded, it’s simply about production and execution rather than the creative process. Which translates as your endurance being more important than your individual spark. The repetition of something meant to only last the time of its initial experience drains all form of emotion from it.

You know when you find a song that makes you feel a certain way, and you love the transcending bubble of euphoria you experience in it’s discovery. But, then you repeat it over and over and over, and after a week the song makes you nautious.

The letting go of emotion is a onetime thing. The process is the same everytime.
But the emotion its self is different due to it being more of less deep within you,
and different synaptic connections at different levels attached to things more or less important to you.

This leads to the inevitable conclusion that individuality and authenticity cannot be captured and reproduced without losing creative magic. In order to create art one has to be unknown, invisible or at least not pressurized and forced to produce results by any external influence. Which is the exact opposite of a job. Creativity thrives in freedom.

Another idea comes to mind where Jim Carry expresses he wishes everyone can be rich and famous to see that being rich isn’t the solution. And many other examples come to mind.

Adam Westbrook in his Vimeo micro-series narrates the beautiful concept of Painting in the dark. I found these videos around 7 years ago, while I was still in school. Westbrook describes that in order to create a masterpiece, one has to be willing to not have any recognition for a long time. Leonardo DaVinci and even Vincent Van Gogh(whom I’ve also read about in “Range” with the example of him trying a vast number of things before finding painting as his preferred medium of expression) spend years being unsuccessful and near invisible as failures in the eyes of society.

The idea that something is an obligation and forcefully done, takes away the magic in the creation process. We become somewhat dependent on performing at a standard others set, rather than letting the creativity and inspiration surge on it’s own, when its ready.

In a previous post, I explained how the quality of the information and the quantity mattered just as much, if not more than the output. Just like when we eat food, eating quality food will give us better health and well-being. Force feeding our minds, just like ducks are forcefed for foigras, leads us to over-saturate and produce on time,
but not at the quality we’d hope for, or with the well-being we seek.

Creation needs an subtle ecosystem. In order to preserve this micro-climate of creativity, the ecosystem needs to function in a rather specific way. In Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explains the idea of creating a perfect environment where the capacity to be in flow is promoted and supported. Without it, flow gets disturbed from external circumstances. The capacity to create and be inspired is tampered with. As if living in a bubble of creativity. The creator environment must meet specific criteria.

Though, this criteria may change for everyone, I need heat, silence, air, electricity,
Wi-fi, privacy and space. Comfort doesn’t hurt but won’t stop me from ideation.
In idea creation, I generally need to be doing anything but searching for ideas or work.

Having said this, the pressure of having a day job can be disturbing to the fragile and delicate ecosystem of creation and lead the creative’s ideation process to get stressed and produce a lesser result than that of a natural process. Especially if the creative is sensitive.

A lot of writers tend to express Seth Godins idea of “Just Shipping“. Though, I find this process to be a forceful abstraction from where I stand on a creative level. I need to let my curiosity wonder. I follow my curiosity and it leads me down rabbit holes which hold nuggets of information I wouldn’t be able to use had I not followed the childlike curiosity to discover. Then, when I’m out of that creative mindset, I sit and edit patiently for hours on end, until I’m satisfied with the results of my ponderations and criticism. That’s grit.

After reading A technique for producing ideas by James Webb Young in my early twenties. I discovered how my personal creation process functioned.

1) Research:

Deep need to seek information related to current problem/subject. Digging into subjects. Reading. Listening. Etc. The sponge process where my mind imbibes every possible new idea and concept I didn’t know about yet. I do this over a period of time. I compound overtime and I then reach a…

2) Stagnation point.

Where my mind has had enough of researching. This is the time where I’m supposed to let go. Like Sherlock Holms or Dr. House, the process of searching is the same. They have an intense period of research where it gets serious. Then something gets intense and they…

3) Let go.

I personally go for a run or a bike ride or a walk in order to change my mind.
I also get these moments in the shower too… Dr. House plays with a ball, or gets caught up with something entirely different like speaking to his friend Wilson and while bouncing ideas of Wilson, House gets his “AHA moment“. The same goes for Sherlock Holmes, a case comes up, they do a little research, gather clues, then get caught up in something trivial which seems entirely opposed to the case and “AHA!

4)Capture:

Once you have your AHA moment, write the core idea(s) down and let them flow onto paper. Or if you’re unfortunate like I am write them down on your phone while you’re cycling as to not forget them. When I’m fortunate enough to be at home,
I create a relaxed environment where I have heat, some music which appeals to me, and completely forget about the world. The music often gets me to enjoy and not have the impression of working. In that moment I write down all enlightened ideas which come to me.

5) Develop: “Write drunk, edit sober.” Ernest Hemingway.

Your enlightened ideas are maybe brilliant, but you also have to transform them into coherent understandable language for other people. My creative language is that of ideas, that doesn’t mean my ideas are directly translated into a language everyone else understands. Which leads to correcting the content of my thoughts into consumable information people can understand and sometimes making it a little longer with examples so people can grasp what I’m on about.

If anything, the creative process tends toward letting our mind do all the work and if we could just get out of the way… I often find that I have to restrict myself from social expression with friends and even family in order to transfer the need to express myself into writing form. If I have access to too many friends, I get caught up with what they want to do. Expressing my ideas to them becomes hot air. While I cut off from people, my only medium of expression is writing or maybe some form of audio, which makes for better creativity and capturing ideas.


If you liked this article, drop a comment and tell me what you thought.

Here are Adam Westbrooks micro series on “painting in the dark”
https://vimeo.com/84022735
https://vimeo.com/87448006
https://vimeo.com/151128399

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You can’t strive for a career and have enough mental ressources to succeed as an entrepreneur at the same time.

Get a job they said, it’ll be fun they said…
Study a career they said, it’ll be fun they said…

I’m about to stop you right now. I was 19 when I made the decision to follow my heart and discover, no matter what it took. Granted I was following the words of our mutual friend Benjamin Franklin..

… and granted, I was severely lacking in confidence. Even if my clarity came though moments where my confidence was more like a grandiose summit I’d reach before plummeting back down into the valley of doubt and wondering.

All this to say that where you are today reflects the choices you made 10 years ago.
Maybe I am rehashing someone’s quote, I have searched but could not find the author or it sadly.. But the point is that if today, you are somewhere you don’t like, it’s probably and most likely because you were following other peoples idea’s of what success means, or trying to succeed in their eyes, or that you weren’t listening to yourself. Or any other number of reasons…

Today, if you have a day job, I consider that to be a disadvantage. Not from the vantage point of trying to survive, obviously it would be foolish and stupid to say that having a job today is a bad thing if it puts a roof over your head. But that isn’t the point of this article nor of this blog and if you’re triggered, you’re missing the entire point.

In today’s world, having a day job is a disadvantage, especially when it comes to the creative pursuit. If you want to live a life of freedom, then you’ll need to act accordingly. I won’t forget that it’s important to have a balance of freedom and something important that you work for, a sense of passion, instead of something you hate that puts food on the table. Ultimately you’ll waste a lot of life doing something you didn’t want to do…

Obviously we all want money, or you’re probably in denial if it isn’t the case.
But, if you trade having the security of 200euros per month from a job which pays you 1200, then you’re not going to be able to use that 200 other than to soothe the pain you create making it through long hours of hard-work for someone else.
Not to mention, when you quit your job, you won’t have much of a security other than what you’ve been able to save away.

Now, trading the security and social pride of having a secure position at a firm, which you’ve studied for years to ensure… for the unknown, to discover what it is that makes you tick, what makes you happy, what you enjoy, what you despise, etc.
Is obviously an expensive and risky… risk. But, knowing deep down that you have an intangible faith, a belief that you will triumph and overcome the obstacles, that you will succeed somehow, because you have some unspoken vision deep down underneath, changes your entire journey and ultimately will help you obtain it.
You’ll end up with the possibility of a cushy luxury life others can only dream of.

There are many times where you will doubt everything you’re going through, and wonder what the point of it all is. You’ll wonder why you’re even here, and you’ll even question the point of living. Though, that’s where the faith comes in…

Having a job, although it gives you a firm conviction that you’ve somehow made it, is a false illusion of security. You still have to get up in the morning to jump through a few hoops so you can prove you’re not an entirely worthless asset to the company. It won’t however build you the structure and confidence to stand on your own two feet and create what you envision.

If you want to take the bridge over to “entrepreneurship” and the “creative life”, you’ll have to come to terms with the painful reality that you’ll doubt and go through painful self reflection on a recurring basis. You’ll become a seeker, you’ll have to find ease with the difficulty you go through on a daily basis.
Questioning family patterns, group patterns, facing isolation, facing your own doubts and judgements, having to look at why you feel down, why you feel bad, why you feel like shit. You’ll question everything. If crossing the bridge to get to the creative life is something you consider, try considering living with your family and getting on with them first, consider going through the burning pits of hell and then having to scramble back to the “socially acceptable box” you fell from to then aim higher, consider losing everything you know and love and your notoriety and material possessions, and the list goes on…

But, if all the possible things you’ve considered are worth going through to achieve your vision, what you’re hoping for… In that case, there is hope and combined with the faith you fortify along the way, there is possibility to endure…

Another point, because tonight I’ve decided to bash jobs a tad more than usual, is that while you’re on the job your mind is focussed on solving problems you’ve given. You’re given ressources to solve the problem, which means that your mind is busy churning out solutions or searching for them like a micro factory.
Your mind is then saturated for anything you want to focus on outside of work, in fact your entire energy ressources will be based upon and invested in something going the other way. Even a year after or two even, your mind will still have knowledge from focussing on those problems. I’m all for having an eclectic knowledge, in fact I pride myself upon having multiple sources and multiple allegories like in “Range”… but… if your primary focus isn’t upon building your internal vision, you’ll end up going in a direction which isn’t entirely of your choosing.

“Don’t quit. Never give up trying to build the world you can see, even if others can’t see it. Listen to your drum and your drum only. It’s the one that makes the sweetest sound.” —Simon Sinek

It takes time, and you’ll wonder what weird pipe you went down, but ultimately, you’ll discover that the freedom you inherit from stepping out of the known trodden path will lead you to higher hights than you could have ever imagined, according to the fact you believe in yourself enough to do so…

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How to Create the ultimate 5 – 10 people list of people you admire and aspire to be around.


“You know how they say
“the 5 people you spend your time with influences who you become” ?”


Hi! Welcome to my blog, I hope this post finds you well in this festive and comfortable season!



You know how they say “the 5 people you spend your time with influences who you become” ?
Well, we don’t always have the possibility to chose the people we want to have around us. Right?

Wrong!

Until recently, the idea that my fate would be tied to my location, the people around me (whether I like them or not, or even if I aspire to them or not…) as well as their minds, was something which created a specific amount of anxiety for me. Not that I fear the people around me or my circumstances, nothing could be further from the truth. Although, I am particularly picky about the time I spend, the attention I give and the subjects I want to devote my time to…
Though, the idea that my life is influenced by those around me and I have no control over those around me can produce a specific amount of worry. I really don’t want to pick up on certain habits, certain mind process’s or ways that don’t suit who I am developing myself to be.

On the one hand, picking people for your life is essential. In the doing we underline the examples we wish to copy. Like monkey’s we pick up on speech patterns, body language and other such subtleties which have made an impression on us because we have either liked the person or disliked them.

Csikszent Mihaly explains in his book Flow that “attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.“. And deciding who and what we give our attention to influences our lives in many subtle and important ways!

If you live in a town, going out and meeting someone specific to spend time with might be a bit of a challenge. Although not impossible, the chances are slim that the exact right people you need will be on your path with the same distinct reasons as you.

In fact, you’d probably waste more time and energy out and about than you would proactively getting done everything on your Important x Urgent list.

Pam Thomas a high end mindset coach describes the concept of energy leakage in his article https://thriveglobal.com/stories/are-you-leaking-energy/

“Depending on how we spend our $100 of energy it’s possible to expend it in ways that create an energetic deficit. When we become energetically deficient we then have to borrow that energy from somewhere…maybe from our own cells (making us tired and susceptible to fear, self-doubt, etc.) or from someone else (making us needy or dependent).”. In understanding that we only have a finite amount of energy per day, it becomes very clear that the attention we have (i.e. 100$ of energy) is better invested in activities which give back to us, individuals who are going in the same direction, or in something with a good ROI. (Sport, Education, meditation, personal development, healthy food, clear uplifting thoughts etc…)

In a recent GQ article on neuroscience, Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett explains that our minds don’t function the way we think they do. How do we think our minds work? And with such a a variety of answers, how do we go about our everyday lives? On first hand, I’d bet that most people believe that the mind is made for thinking, stocking information… and alternatively the others don’t really wonder what the brain does at all… Though Dr.Barrett’s findings changes our understanding of how it functions and ultimately leeds us to driving our vessels in a more responsable and even more careful way. The concept of allostasis was proposed by Sterling and Eyer in 1988 as a process of reestablishing stability in response to a challenge. Barrett explains that our mind is merely a regulator, a controller to sustain our survival. “Every action you take (or don’t take) is an economic choice. Everything you think, feel, and do is a consequence of your brain’s central mission to keep you alive and well by managing your body budget.”

This being said, you’re probably thinking we’re incredibly off topic. We’re not.

Taking in to account that some people leave us depleted and tired after spending time with them.
Some even go as far as saying specific people are “Energy Vampires”, or “Narcissists“.
Though, lets stay on topic, I nearly lost you a few moments ago…
We’d rather leave conversations with people, feeling empowered, feeling confident and bold, ready to take on the world, right?

So how do we achieve that?

How do we find the people we aspire to?

How do we encounter those so-called people we admire?

And how on earth do we create our team of smart, high achieving, high energy people?

  1. It all starts with Self: We start by focussing on ourselves. Focussing on ourselves is the surest of ways to discover what we like, what we dislike, understand how we feel about this or that, as well as discover what we’re curious about. And this takes time, investment, and even going through the nitty gritty emotions. YIKES, I know you’re hating me right about now.. But it’s true. Going through our nitty gritty emotions by ourselves over and over again is how we grow and ultimately overcome them.
    Be patient with yourself!

  2. Procrastination: Having spent a vast amount of time on naval gazing, as you might put it. I’d like to invite you to reconsider your perception of Procrastination. It is there for a reason, so no pressure, embrace it and learn to invite it into your life.
    I generally procrastinate when my energy is saturated, I’m tired or low energy, or I need to breath from the depths I immerse myself with complicated topics.

  3. FocusMate: Okay, this might perhaps be the most important part of this article. The tool which enables you, with the right perception, to network, to grow, to exchange, and also to stay where you are and save your energy for better things. You know, the productivity and creativity in pt.2 and the
    well-being I’m about to express in pt.4? Yes Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m talking about FocusMate.

    Focusmate is an online Website/App which is meant to help you with your productivity and stay distraction free, focussed on your goals. Thats the primary reason we use Focusmate.
    The secondary reason is not what it is programmed to do, but what is most beneficial to everyone you encounter. Smile, be Warm, be Yourself, and share. You might end up meeting some really interesting, upbeat people you’d never get the opportunity to encounter otherwise.

  4. Energy, energy, energy... Yes, we’ve talked about that a lot haven’t I?
    You’ll need energy if you want to produce, work, focus on anything.
    This means you’ll need good healthy food. This also means that you’ll need to channel the energy you do have into meaningful productive practices which give you an ROI. I’ll talk about this in my next article.

  5. Structure. Yes, in order to use everything I’m talking about and something you can rely on, you’ll need a structure a ‘goto’ reference which is tangible and malleable. For this, I use the good old Whiteboard, a written structured list compartmentalised and the help of some tools
    I will add at the end of the article.


By using these 5 points, I get to meet high energy, ambitious people on a daily basis. I attract them because I am myself on that high level frequency (The exercises, The food help to develop the energy for this). And I’m able to do it often because I’m following a structure I created for myself which allows me to follow it even if I have no clue of what I’m doing that day or even feeling a bit hazy…


I thought I’d add some goodies:

Here are a Few Tools I like and use on a daily basis which get me to better focus, produce or simply keep track of what I’m doing or where I’m going.

Tools:

Create an Effective todo list: Learning how to create an effective todo list can prove invaluable. This article has been life changing in how it has effected my todo list creation. In that before I actually didn’t know how to create on effectively. I also added the notion of the Eisenhower Matrix in that I will only put what is urgent and important & important and not urgent.

https://www.notion.so/: So you need to go to the Office to have a physical layout of what needs to be done and what has been done? NO NEED! Notion is the perfect app for tracking and organising tasks, for business or simply for home. You can keep track of

https://habitshareapp.com/: You know how I talked about developing habits earlier on in the article, the concept that you can track your actions over the course of time and visualise your progress and
percentage of accuracy.

https://slack.com/: I’ve found that if you want to distribute a research, a message, and target a specific group of people, Slack is the best place to do so. Let me explain before you judge me as someone exploiting the indigenous tribes… While I was working on a startup in Fin-tech I needed to find a FullStack Developer capable of building the App. While I had no clue of how to grasp a developer, especially in the midst of a COVID lockdown, I got creative. Low and behold, I found 35 developers by targeting Digital Nomad slack communities in the space of 1 week! Need I say more?

https://discord.com/ People like to use this for gaming, because that is what it is originally used for.
Though, I use it for the TEAM to talk on in order to get work done without the hassle of planning call’s etc. Once everyone is subscribed, its fairly easy, everyone can have a reachable online office to do their work. And the messaging system is pretty simple.

https://www.focusmate.com/ Conceived as a studying platform, I figured out after a while that it could be a place to network and find likeminded people, according that you do it right and don’t overstep boundaries etc. People are generally open to discussing what they do, they’ll tell you about their goals at the start of every session and you can use it for training your elevator pitch for Work, Social, Partnerships, learning about new tools or insights, hek even relationships why don’t you. But really.. do it correctly, no one wants unwanted harassment in the privacy of their own home!

https://miro.com/: “The online collaborative whiteboard platform to
bring teams together, anytime, anywhere.” The Crema team explain the functioning of the app (in this video) pretty well and while is it still a collaborative online whiteboard, what you can do with it is nothing short of genius.

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Finding a peaceful balance between what’s going on in the world and where you are inside of yourself



It is important to be in harmony between how we feel inside and how we are outside.
This isn’t always possible, if so we must learn to love ourselves, and accept it from the inside out. 

Hence why we strive for perfection. People will qualify us through how they see us first and foremost. Which is distressing for anyone who isn’t picture perfect in today’s society. How can we possibly keep up with the constant update of knowledge?trends, tips, articles, news outlets, podcast shows and live to be as great as everyone else? How can we like anything we are, when we consistently compare ourselves with “everyone else”?

We simply cannot keep up. We can’t, even if we wanted to keep up with everything that is happening on a daily basis all around the world. There are way too many people and events occurring.

It is then wise to go in the opposite direction and disregard everything and everyone.
It becomes essential, in order to focus on the one most important ingredient in the recipe known to date, to neglect anything and everything but ourselves, how we’re feeling, what we’re thinking, how we function etc. I’d say the COVID is a blessing, but I already lived like this pre-covid. It’s very much so a blessing for everyone else, whether they can see it or not.

The contrast of one’s objective and virtual presence, is an extension of self. It’s very easy for everyone to get caught up in the illusion that How we are seen by others, How we perform in video games, or media covered games, or any other sort of exposure through a screen. It simply isn’t Who we are, nor is it What we are. It is but an intention, a role we play well, a placement of our time and effort in projecting something for others to relate to.

Take it all away, and all you have is yourself. Have you ever tried sitting in the dark with one candle, with no screen, no book, no kindle or music or anything. Just you and the candle? I bet you’ll get a little anxious at a certain point. Truth is, at first it might seem uncomfortable, maybe even anxiety producing… But by staying with it, we get to experience ourselves, what we’re feeling, why we’re feeling that way and so on… A vital road, in taking time out for us.

In todays world we need to perfect our camera presence in order to feel confident with others. If we are critical of ourselves, we cannot feel confident entirely with others. We’ll often have illogicisms, and discrepancies we need to overcome. Looking at myself through the camera, I see my critical self come out and poke holes at what I am doing as well as how I am corresponding with myself, the camera, and others around. When speaking on camera, I discovered that I was highly self critical. The process of overcoming the camera’s perception, isn’t the camera, but how I’m seeing myself through the lens. 

Have something to say, an exercise to follow. A guide-line and rules to follow in order to overcome and progress. Once we have the rules of the game, we can test, go through trial and error until we become perfect with the camera “in our own perception of perfect”. Above all, we see our flaws. They’re highlighted and in our face. They’re big and bright in contrast to what we’re normally aware of. When other people see us, they take it as a given “This dude has x, y or z… that’s just normal.” But what if, on that day the “Dude” in question had something which wasn’t normal to his everyday settings of normality?

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What is the main reason people don’t try?

People don’t try because they don’t believe in themselves or are in fear of the outcome. Better yet, they may have a fear of success and the Trying of X or Y creates a sense of paralysis. 
People may not try for many reasons. Not believing in themselves or their skills, or their capacity to overcome obstacles. 

It can also be environmental, the people around us influence us much more than we know. Our entourage can make or break our belief and vision. It’s essential, if we want to achieve anything, to find a space to think and convince and confirm that what we are doing, we’re doing for the right reasons.
Stepping away from people who don’t believe in your projects or ideas is essential, for your creativity as well as your wellbeing, and that of your ideas. 

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Jobs vs Purpose

How many years are you supposed to study to get a job? 
How many years are you supposed to invest into your studies in order to land a job? 

In my view, the easiest way to get a job is to work on social skills like retail and jobs alike. 

I studied for 2 years to understand how sales worked, before then studying for 3 years to get A levels in french litterature and philosophy. 

Then I was pretty much set to get any entree level job I wanted. Before graduating sales, I had read “The Game” by Neil Strauss, in which the author talks about approaching as many girls as possible to get over the fear of rejection and potentially expose yourself to more people, which in proportion helps to achieve adding more phone numbers to your contact list and potentially getting more girls in your life. 

Though, I had already mastered that while I was in high-school and spent most of my time chatting up birds. On recess, lunch breaks etc. 

Then later in life I simply applied the same principle to work, print out a tone of cv’s and apply the same mechanism, walk in with a big smile like with the birds. 

Have a confident tone, like with the birds. Eye contact, like with the birds.
Dress well and be well groomed, like with the birds… 

Having a sales degree made things pretty easy, and being a salesman also proved to ease things. Though, getting a job wasn’t difficult for me, so I could simply apply my ambition and aim for higher and better if I didn’t like where I was. Which I did.  I was also limited to the job function though.

Had I studied for 10 years to become a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer,
the doors wouldn’t have been open to me to do job hoping to the same degree.

I wouldn’t have noticed how boss’s functioned and how they exploited their employee’s to make money for them. I wouldn’t have had the freedom to jump from one job to another, or land communication jobs. The thing with a job is that it is like a lillypad, it helps us to get from where we are to where we are going. Jobs are perfect for anyone who has entrepreneur ideas. The difficulty with jobs though, is that you don’t have infinite energy or health.

You can work as hard as you want to land the job, but once you have the job it becomes difficult to sustain that same level of intensity. 

As for a career, you study for a long while in order to become a cog in someone else’s system, only to then wear yourself out but have no other options because you’ve clogged your mind up so much with your learning mechanisms that it becomes very difficult to then switch to anything else.

When you are endocrinated with studies, your mind tends to pick up information differently. You’re okay with force feeding yourself. Though, you’re doing it, most of the time, because that is the only choice. Work your head off to get a diploma, and then get a job according to what you have studied. 

This is very limiting, for a few reasons. 

1) You cannot switch, your diploma stunts your ability to get do anything else.
You’re stuck self identifying with your diploma. 

2) You haven’t learn’t to think outside of academic spaces, which is limiting in the real world. Where in school, you learn facts by heart, your mind becomes a warehouse of dusty encyclopaedic facts, which is useful if … you’re passing an exam. 

Though, your mind functions differently. In the real world, our minds pick information, based upon our curiosity. We then dig in, sift and sort the information. Pass on to something else, etc. Only to then conclude with Eurika moments when your brain has finished processing all the information. 

Your mind has been taught to think in a way which doesn’t equate to finding solutions you need, but solutions you’re required to find for someone else. You’ve been taught to retain information or methods in order to apply them later. You haven’t been taught how to think or how to use your brain to its full potential. 

3) You don’t have any real world experience. This doesn’t help your confidence or your capacity to believe in yourself. And you often get used in the business world.

4) You don’t work your EQ, which becomes inherantly more important than any IQ. Your IQ is solely there for you to figure out problems. Your EQ is there to help you go through problems. It’s your sticking power.

5) You don’t learn risk. You’re coddled in a little world of privilege inside of academic structures. You don’t go through difficulties. Infrastructures protect you from risk by providing a lush environment of academic pretention. 

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Do you get frustrated when your creative ideas don’t work out?

So far, I’ve found that I am an optimist in this regard.

I cannot remember any ideas which haven’t taught me something. I love to learn, and setbacks always have a silver lining. 

When I was younger, I’d get angry at myself for not living up to my standards and my expectations. But with time, I see that’s wasted energy in that, it’s bad for one’s health. It’s clearly just unproductive. So by finding a more harmonious way of living and accepting myself, life has become fluid instead of forced. Therefore, frustration seeps away. 

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Covering the soul in colour and seeing it clearly.

Depending on your belief, we each have a singular soul or in atheist terms we all have a specific set of psychological and biological makings which make us individually singular. Whatever your God or lack-thereof sais everyone is different.

No two people are the same, even if they look identical, who they are on the inside, how they think and feel is very different. Except those who have no clue and spend their time living inside a tiny box, in their tiny consumer mindset running around like
lab-rats while they try to please their neighbours and work colleagues. 

Though ultimately when we get to explore – it takes painful awakenings sometimes- our singularity, we discover a distinguished set of ways which work only for us. 

Why? No two human beings are alike. Not even remotely… We look alike and have similar needs. But as we distinguish ourselves, we step away from the conformism of the group setting which we aspire to. We affirm that we are unique… the adverts no longer apply.

The soul is like a blank canvas, we come into life, and the mind can sense it clearly because we haven’t been formed to think or act a specific way. Over time we’re taught how to perceive the world, people want to leave an imprint on us, they want to 

form us into what they want. Some want to use us, some want what we have, etc. Though, over time, we cannot see the blank canvas anymore, theres lots of mess around it, depriving us of seeing it clearly. Until, we get rid of the excess baggage we’re told to carry around since we’re young. 

Society wants us to conform, we must live according to the peer group around us otherwise they’ll reject us, we must have diplomas in order to work in order to survive. If we have diplomas, most people believe they’ll give us access to a distinguished career. 

A distinguished career which, is basically status signalling if we think about it. To show others that we fit in and we do it well, that our minds have been formed by prestige in a highly esteemed ivy league school.

Though what isn’t being said here is that we’re ultimately searching for confirmation.
A written diploma and perhaps photos of our fraternity to make it clear to ourselves that we have confirmation that we are eligible to think for ourselves and take action in the world. That’s an expensive confirmation!

Every experience in life, is like sculpting rock or painting with paintballs…

The experiences chip away at us, until our learn’t ways “the excessive external rock” surrounding our soul is chipped off. Or life takes shots at us, until every inch of our soul is covered in colour (if we use the canvas idea). All the paintballs which missed weren’t made for us, even if they were aimed at us, and our goal is to simply take enough shots in order to cover the canvas. Not all at once, but over time, life will shoot us until our canvas is covered in colour and our soul is clearly visible to us. 

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What is your view on creativity?

Creativity can be thinking inside of the box. Parameters vary.

You can be creative within a certain structure or limitation which gives you the possibility to create with X or Y outcome. Say for example I want to paint a painting, and the settings with which I’m aloud to create that painting are only black and gold paint. That is the box I’m aloud to create in. That is creativity. 

It is also true for the contrary, say you’re not aloud to use the colour gold or the pigment black, but you’re aloud to use all the others, That is thinking outside of the box for example. Or simply using other types of materials in order to produce an outcome. Creativity when applied to business is problem solving. Having a Box is like having a plan. It was Eisenhower who said:

“No battle was ever won according to plan, but no battle was ever won without one.” 

I believe this applies to creativity. We can either chose to paint within the box, or like rules we can disregard them… and simply create on inspiration. It depends on the means of expression.

I think the main mistake we make is believing that creativity is only that burst of inspiration when we’re in a state of flow. Editing productions is also creativity, only its in a more grounded creativity. It’s rational instead of spontaneous.

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When people break down their limiting beliefs, they become unstoppable, more creative. How do you define creativity? How creative are you in your business or life?

I define creativity as an energy, for me its a state of flow where what I envision comes out in writing, speaking, music, ideas and visions or what I can draw or paint. 

I would say I am very creative. There’s a difference between creative for productive. These are two different things.

Creative is the capacity to come up with ideas, to be stimulated and curious and driven to take action upon them.

It’s like an energy switch. Like turning on a light bulb. The energy behind the switch is something you cultivate and then allocate to whatever outlet, just like electricity.

I also practice energetic transmutation, which is harnessing my sexual energy and focussing it towards my creative pursuits, or physical exercise like running or cycling. 

Productive on the other hand is execution, this depends on your state of health and your discipline to apply your creativity through one outlet or another.

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