Cure for Common Fear

I wanted to write a blog posting each day this week, but a lack and alas, yesterday was the day from hell, and I was up until 2:30 AM working. There were a lot of challenges throughout the day, I felt frustrated and was full of fear.

However things would change as the night progressed. Around 8:00 PM, I played a league racquetball match at the club I belong to in Vancouver, and after winning the match and giving my opponent some pointers, I had a revelation. A realization that the cure for common fear is simply sharing my knowledge and experience with other people. Focusing that thought a little more, having the confidence in the knowledge and experience that I have accumulated over the years and sharing it with the people that need or want it.

Last year, I had the opportunity to read "Strength Finders 2.0" by Tom Rath, and through the process of taking the test, my top five strengths were:

1. Futuristic: "You are the type of person that likes to peer over the horizon. The future fascinates you...You are a dreamer who sees visions of what could be and who cherishes those visions."



2. Intellection: "You like to think. You like mental activity. The theme of Intellection does not dictate what you are thinking about; it simply describes that you like to think. You are introspective."



3. Input: "You are inquisitive. You collect things. You might collect information -- words, facts, books, and quotations -- or you might collect tangible objects...Whatever you collect, you collect it because it interests you. And yours is the kind of mind that finds so many things interesting."



4. Empathy: "You can sense the emotions of those around you. You can feel what they are feeling as though their feelings are your own. You help people find the right phrases to express their feelings -- to themselves as well as to others. You help them give voice to their emotional life."



5. Adaptability: "You live in the moment. You don't see the future as a fixed destination. Instead, you see it as a place that you create out of the choices that you make right now. And so you discover your future one choice at a time. You are, at heart, a very flexible person who can stay productive when the demands of work are pulling you in many different directions at once."

As I reflect upon this list of strengths, the important thing that I learn is that all of the strengths require an ability and desire to share the results with other people.

For example, If I don't share my visions for the future with others, will those visions have an opportunity to flourish and come true? If I don't share what I am thinking about, how will I know that those thoughts and ideas impacted someone else? What if someone can learn from what I know? I won't know, unless I share my collections of information with people. And finally, sharing empathy and adaptability creates an environment of relationship, community and trust paving the way for life to flourish.

The true cure for common fear is to share that which has been given to you with others, and that is what I hope you take from this blog posting, a desire to share with you, what I know. It may seem incredibly simple and easy for you, but for me it is a life-altering attitude that needs to invade everything that I do on a daily basis.

Unblocking Creative Blocks

It is safe to say that I have been creatively blocked for sometime now. I'll grant you that by running a digital media production company, there is a certain sense of being "on" that I need to maintain, but I know deep down inside that my ideas are growing stale, that my techniques and stories need to grow, and that I need to take more creative risks. I couldn't find any way to overcome the blocks to creativity that I was struggling with. The work kept piling up, and grew incredibly tired and frustrated.

Enter a few tidbits of advice that I have read, heard people tell me, or personally experienced along the journey that I have been on.

The first morsel of advice is a concept, from the book "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron, called the morning pages, a simple exercise of writing three pages each morning. Stream-of-consciousness, journaling, reporting the thought process of your inner mind, whatever you want to call it, it comes down to freeing your mind of the things that occupy the resources that you need creatively. I have been doing this every morning for 5 days and have accumulated 15 pages of writing filled with thoughts, ideas, feelings, emotions, things that have been building up inside. The obvious observation that I have is, "wow, I haven't written 15 pages of material in a long time, probably since college." It is followed by, "you know, I can do this!" It feels great to write. To spend time writing about the things that I have been neglecting. Spending time pondering, wondering, wandering, and loving the process of creativity that is really the essence of the life that I have been given to live.

Advice often comes best from people that know you best, and the next nugget comes in the time that I get to spend with a friend, almost weekly, as we talk about business, ministry, and life. It is amazing how freeing the words, "just be yourself" can truly be. When you spend as much time comparing yourself and your work to other people and companies, you get tired. So, when someone says to "just be yourself," it helps you to break through a block. A block of envy and jealousy that increases the fear that you will never be as good as person A is, keeping you from attempting to do something, to risk, to find success through failure.

Lately, I have been inundated with so much work, that I have felt overwhelmed. I have never been a disciplined or structured man, but the amount of work got to a point, where a little structure and discipline was definitely not a bad thing to really invest some time in developing. The fruit of that effort as been creating a weekly schedule of the work that I need to get done. I know that sounds really simple, mundane, and possibly counter-intuitive, but it really helps me to see what I need to get done, and what I can communicate to clients.

You probably ask yourself, how do you schedule creativity? You can't schedule that, it's intangible, you can't grab hold of it whenever you want. I'll be the first to agree with you, you can't. Creativity is elusive. But I'll tell you one thing that is consistent with the experience of others, creativity will honor the daily pursuit of it. The only word that I can think of is courting. Creativity wants to be courted. Not taken advantage of. And that is what a daily schedule does for me. It helps me to schedule jobs, play time, and most importantly, encourages me to add things like writing blog postings.

Finally, the only real way to unblock my creative blocks, is to get in the bulldozer and drive at it full steam ahead. Hard work and determination, with the focus not being on this exact moment as the culmination of my life, but on the fact that my life is comprised of millions of moments like this one, all growing together, making me who I am.

Getting beyond the fear of being blocked, leads to freedom. It helps you to rise up and walk in the creative sense, makes your life richer, livelier, and one step closer to fulfillment.

Finding the Right Book...or Letting it Find You

I'm a huge fan of books. I love to read them, I love to smell them, and I love the way that they accumulate in front of the bookcases in my apartment because I have too many of them.

In line with my love for books, is the trip to the bookstore. Rows and rows of books towering overhead. The smell of old and new books mingling with the scent of coffee, and occasionally cigarettes. By going to a bookstore, I experience something that Amazon.com does not have: the chance to wander amongst the infinite offerings, touch them, preview them, and see what they have to offer. I can also talk with people that have recommendations, actually hearing and experiencing why they feel so passionate about a certain book. Through this process, I find exactly the book that I need. Or as I like to think, the book finds me.

Case in point. Friday night, my wife and I went to Cover to Cover Books in Downtown Vancouver, an independent bookstore that offers new and old books, the chance to talk with some incredible people, and a huge cat that is friendly. It is a glimpse at what bookstores used to be before corporations turned the bookstore into a mass-produced coffee-cafe-music-books-videos-magazine store catering to the person wanting to spend list price on everything. Anyway, I wandered the store, found what I wanted to buy, and as I perused the section about writing, a book stood out to me, "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron. In a nutshell, it is a book about creativity blocks that you, as an artist, could be struggling with and encourages you to be free in your pursuit of creativity. It was exactly the book that I needed, and it found me. As I go through it, I am re-inspired. I feel more alive. And it was worth every penny.

And without the experience of the local independent bookstore, I don't know if the book would have found me. I'll never know at this point, but I am grateful that it did.

Update on Three Leaves on a Branch

I'm happy to report that the three leaves on a branch are still alive and hanging in.