January 03, 2021
THE YEAR OF LIVING CREATIVELY: The Underground We Cover

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This just in! You have a big, beautiful idea that you want to manifest -- a cool project, venture, or aspiration you want to get out of your head and into the world. Maybe you've been hatching this egg for years or maybe it's just made itself known to you. But no matter how long you've been noodling on this grand possibility, it's likely that you... er... uh... sometimes feel doubt, disengaged, discombobulated, or despair.

Welcome to the human race! This resistance comes with the territory of trying to birth something new and wonderful in the world. Which is precisely what The Year of Living Creatively is all about.

Below is a partial list of topics covered in course along with quotes by extraordinary people who know what it takes to navigate the often mysterious creative process.

NOTE: Two versions of the course now exist: 1) A two-month, online immersion; 2) A yearlong subscription service.

1. Follow Your Calling: "Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart desires must come to you." - Mahatma Gandhi

2. Embrace New Beginnings: "Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

3. Clarify Your Vision: "A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock pile when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind." - Antoine Saint-Exupery

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4. Cultivate Patience: "The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones." - Confucius

5. Go Beyond Self-Doubt: "The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." - Sylvia Plath

6. Discover Your Real Question: "There are no right answers to wrong questions." - Ursula K. Le Guin

7. Trust Yourself Deeply: "Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts." - Rita Mae Brown

8. Let Go of Perfectionism: "And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good." - John Steinbeck

9. Make Friends With Uncertainty: "The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers." - Erich Fromm

10. Rethink Success: "Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." - Albert Schweitzer

11. Acknowledge Daily Progress: "Research has shown over and over again that the more you acknowledge your past successes, the more confident you become in taking on and successfully accomplishing new ones." - Jack Canfield

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12. Embrace Polarities: "The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension of opposites." - Carl Jung

13. Honor Thy Intuition: "Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next." - Jonas Salk

14. Go Beyond Your Obstacles: "The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it." - Moliere

15. Transform Your Limiting Assumptions: "Begin challenging your assumptions. Your assumptions are the windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won't come in." - Alan Alda

16. Attract Alchemical Collaborators: "Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." - Helen Keller

17. Let Discipline Be Born of Love: "Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius." - Mozart

18. Be Willing Not to Know: "By not knowing, not hoping to know and not acting like we know what's happening, we begin to access our inner strength." - Pema Chodron

19. Create More Time: "You will never find the time for anything. If you want time, you must make it." - Charles Burton

20. Reframe Failure: "I have not failed once. I've just found 10,000 ways that didn't work." - Thomas Edison

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21. Find Your Courage: "I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me." - Erica Jong

22. Take Some Risks: "If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner." - Tallulah Bankhead

23. Experiment! Pilot! Try New Things:
"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it." - Pablo Picasso

24. Be a Divine Maniac: "Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission." - Peter Drucker

25. Act As If: "By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The non-existent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired." - Nikos Kazantzakis

26. Originate Bold, New Ideas: "I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." - John Cage

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27. Learn from Feedback: "Average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached. Great players want to be told the truth." - Doc Rivers

28. Establish Your Creative Workspace: "There is no ideal condition for creativity. What works for one person is useless for another. The only criterion is this: Make it easy on yourself. Find a working environment where the prospect of wrestling with your muse doesn't scare you, doesn't shut you down." - Twyla Tharp

29. Embrace Solitude: "Nothing will change the fact that I cannot produce the least thing without absolute solitude." - Goethe

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30. Be Playful: "The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct arising from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object it loves." - Carl Jung

31. Simplify: "It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas." - Charles Peguy

32. Be In the Moment: "I'll play it first and tell you what it is later." - Miles Davis

33. Persevere: "Every strike brings me closer to the next home run." - Babe Ruth

34. Ask for Help: "You can do anything, but not everything." - David Allen

35. Dream Big: Blue Sky Thinking: "The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge." - Albert Einstein

36. Complete What You Started: "Genius is infinite painstaking." - Michelangelo

37. Let the Old Forms Die: "Every act of creation is, first of all, an act of destruction." - Pablo Picasso

38. Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway: "I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life -- and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do." - Georgia O'Keefe

39. Honor What Makes You Unique:
"There is a vitality, a life force, that is translated to you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and will be lost." - Martha Graham

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40. Change the Old Story You're Telling Yourself: "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." - Maya Angelou

41. Tune Into When and Where You Get Your Best Ideas: "Why is it I always get my best ideas while shaving?" -- Albert Einstein

42. Maintain Your Positive Momentum: "An object at rest tends to stay at rest. An object in motions tends to stay in motion." -- Newton's First Law of Motion

43. Incubate! Lay Fallow! Let It Be! "It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing." -- Gertrude Stein

44. See Through New Eyes: "It's not what you look it. It's what you see." -- H.D. Thoreau

45. Embrace Messiness, Awkwardness, and Frustration: "Confusion is just a name for an order that is not yet understood." -- Henry Miller

46. Honor Your Crazy Ideas: "If at first the Idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it." -- Albert Einstein

47. Boundary Alert: Know When to Say No: "When you say yes to others, make sure you are not saying no to yourself." -- Paulo Coelho

48. Develop a Practice of Creativity: "There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well." - Agatha Christie

49. Establish Your Creative Workspace: "Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can." -- Arthur Ashe

50. Diffuse Your Inner Critic: "If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?" -- Maya Angelou

51. Pause and Reflect: "We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience." -- John Dewey

52. Get Out of the Box "He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch." - Jean-Luc Godard

OTHER TOPICS

53. The 12 Traits of Highly Creative People
54. Nurture or Fracture: Doing the Significant Other Dance
55. Persevere No Matter What
56. Play the Long Game
57. The Relationship Between Haha and Aha

58. Embracing Solitude
59. Act As If
60. Discover the Elegant Solution
61. Increase Your Focus and Attention
62. How to Be a Creative Catalyst
63 How to Identify Your Blind Spots

64. The Wisdom of Rumi
65. The Wisdom of Albert Einstein
66. The Wisdom of Leonardo DaVinci
67. The Wisdom of Georgia O'Keefe
68. The Wisdom of Elon Musk

69. The Wisdom of Pablo Picasso
70. The Wisdom of Helen Keller
71. The Wisdom of Frank Zappa
72. The Wisdom of Nicola Tesla
73. The Wisdom of Michelangelo

74. The Wisdom of John Lennon
75. The Wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi
76. The Wisdom of Martin Luther King
77. The Wisdom of Prem Rawat
78. The Wisdom of Amadeus Mozart

79. The Wisdom of Frieda Kahlo
80. The Wisdom of Steve Jobs
81. Where and When Do You Get Your Best Ideas?
82. Spark Your Creative Imagination
83. The Power of Immersion

84. The 12 Traits of Highly Creative People
85. After the Honeymoon: The Messy Middles
86. Innovation Is All About Making New Connections
87. Let the Old Forms Die
88. Freely Express Yourself
89. Let Go of Attachment to Results

The Year of Living Creatively
Testimonials
The Year of Living Creatively Manifesto
Who Is The Year of Living Creatively Really For?

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at January 3, 2021 03:03 PM

Comments

Mr. Ditkoff �
52 doses of actionable thought � for action. Thank you for listing contents for "The Year of Living Creatively: [For Life]."
Perhaps "sympatico" with what I'm working on: "Lifelong Leadership Learning."
More via eMail �.
Cordially � Dick Webster
P.S. � "Feed the Genie" prompts thought and writing, often action too. Thank you again for that incredible offer � Spring, 2020.

Posted by: DickWeb [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 5, 2021 03:21 PM

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