Looking for the spark
I love lighting people up. In all areas of my life, what gets me going most is seeing others get excited.
Why?
It’s not just because it’s a nice feeling- sure there’s that too.
Effective
When people are excited they are also at their most effective. If someone is excited about something, they have more energy to give to it. It’s in everyone’s best interest to be excited.
Genius
If genius is the unique gift one brings to the world, then it’s proceeded by this spark of excitement. Genius doesn’t come out when things are dull or when it feels like a chore. Genius is waiting to be invited. We all have genius inside us and so it’s all of our responsibility to access it to help everyone in only the way we can.
Dancing, signing, acting and listening in all directions
When I teach, content comes second to the approach. I believe if I can orient the student to see the work in a way that they enjoy, we can cover whatever the learning is easily. So I use everything in my power to elicit that response. What exactly does an excited student look like? Well maybe excited isnt the best choice of word; some might associate that with being hyper, loud or unsettled. No. What I’m looking for is the focussed spark in the eye of ‘Oh, this matters to me’ or ‘I’m ready to play‘. That’s the magic zone.
Do all you can to get that. Look for the spark.
Ingredients to make the cake
I’m watching Severance again. It’s great.
As I sit in the dark and gaze at the beautifully constructed piece of art in front of me, I’m immediately inspired.
I’m stuck again with the thousands of ways what I’m watching can and will affect what ever else it is I make next.
I haven’t been watching anything lately and to me that shows in the level creativity (or lack of) I’ve been feeling in my recent films.
You get out what you put in.
Consume things in the direction of the things you want to create.
Don’t plagiarize, BUT don’t starve yourself.
Standards
How you do anything is how you do everything.
Do the dishes and make your bed.
Then when it comes time to do your best at the thing that matters most to you, you’ll be ready.
Dual
Opposites have power.
Having the ability to change between gives you choice.
The ability to be soft and strong.
Quick but measured.
Instinctive and thoughtful.
Choosing nuance over binary is synonymous with flexibility and flexibility is power.
Systems
Ah systems- the promised land.
Systems have the ability to save thousands of your hours and prevent you from living the same week over and over again without advancing.
A lack of systems can be a trap. You can be enacting all the hall marks of ‘hard work’ but that might be all it is, ‘hard’ work. It’s not the same as smart work. As we progress, the things we are working on should be progressing as well.
You don’t want to spend your life building temporary shacks over and over again. Perhaps you start with a shack, then advance to building with wood and brick, then working on training builders, then working on training trainers…
Systems enable all this. Don’t get trapped. Build your systems.
The sparkle in the eye
Traveling in a foreign country the trickiest thing is sometimes just buying food at the local shop or asking what’s vegetarian on the menu.
In all these circumstances, all I’m looking for is a sparkle in the eye. This is the sparkle that says “Hey fellow human, I see you’re nice and I’m a kind person too”.
This is a universal sparkle that requires little shared language. When I enter these tricky new conversations with locals, I’m on the hunt.
More often than not, you can see the little sparkle- and certainly if you’re looking for it, you spur it out.
If that sparkle isn’t there after being so sweetly invited by your own optical sparkle, then any unpleasantness from them has nothing to do with you and you can move swiftly on to finding the next foreign sparkle.
Leaning forward
I’m reading Seth Godin’s Stop Stealing Dreams manifesto and I was completely struck by his description of the type of students our schools need to produce.
Kids who do their best, not because it’s ‘going to be in the test’ but because they care.
Students, he says, that are leaning forward.
What’s it connected to?
I just did one of those work late into the night and forget what time it is ones.
It was easy. Why? The hours melted into what felt like a second because I wasn’t thinking about the actual work I was doing- I was connected directly to the vision.
What is this labour connected to?
Hook your work trailer onto the tail of a MUSCLE car called your vision and you’ll be pulled along on those late nights. And this will all be a story one day. When you slogged through the desert because you saw the promised land.
Being the guy who doesn’t know
I was on a tour for an ancient structure today and I didn’t know anything about it. As I went up to buy the ticket I felt the impulse to play cool and nonchalant and purchase the ticket.
Feeling a little allergic to the impulse to try and be cool, I decided instead to just ask what the heck it was I was about to see. I was afraid the person selling me the ticket (who already looked a bit foreign and aloof) would roll their eyes because I’m the annoying tourist.
So what is this ticket actually for?
To my delight, her face changed and she was more than happy to explain it all to me.
Being in a non-English speaking country is forcing me to be the guy who doesn’t know, the guy who will probably look dumb, out of place or do the wrong thing.
And I’m so okay with it. I want to use my time in these countries to condition a comfort in me with being this person.
Resist it when you feel yourself think “Hmm, no I won’t ask that I’ll look dumb”
Ask away and be brave enough to look a bit silly. You’ll be stroger for it and will probably make a nice little human connection.
Anxiety is the Dizziness of freedom.
Reframe your fear and reclaim the infiniteness of your potential.