You Are Beautiful

Over at upsi's blog is a sticker stating ~ You are beautiful.  Imagine such stickers stuck all over a city.  One of the comments added more websites to pass on good will and encouragement.

Jess said...

It's a movement! http://you-are-beautiful.com/ESSAYS.htm

A friend of mine does something sortof similar, acts of kindness she calls "guerrilla goodness": http://kindnessgirl.com/guerrilla-goodness/ It's contagious, and really uplifting to do a project like this. I've heard some people say that stickers don't count as graffiti, but I'm not sure that's true.

 I wonder what kind of movement can be started by passing good things on to others?

Creativity continued

My last post was placed on a whim from one of the the photography pages I enjoy reading.  I heard some of these perspectives while working and studying photography.  I was fascinated how narrow minded some of the professors were on their definitions of creative art.  Some were so narrow minded that the only way to get a good grade was to play the game of "Can you guess what I am thinking and produce it?"  If you went off in your own creative direction you could get slapped down hard.  However, there were other professors that pushed me to the very edges of my mind and seemed to encourage me to leap into nothingness that suddenly turned into something when you stepped there.  The second type of professor encouraged me to write my book at the bottom of my blog.  My imagination was hard pressed to match what I had lived through.  My creativity as a child helped make the first split possible.  My curiosity has played around creativity for many years.  When I was in 7th grade, the art teacher then advised me to never take another art class since I was so terrible at all forms of art.  Well, she was right.  I didn't do art her way.  I stayed away for many years.  When I joined the Art department as a computer tech I thought it was a great match.  They didn't want to learn about computers and I didn't want to learn about art.  I told them I had zero art experience.  Problem solving was what they hired me for anyway.  As time progress, it became obvious I needed to learn something about photography so I could solve the problems they were having in the computer labs.  Attending my first art class since seventh grade I was paid to attend photography 101.  Ten years later I earned a Bachelor in Fine Art ~ Photography.  Creativity became a curious thing that was debated endlessly in classes.  What was it?  Who had it?  Does it make a difference?  Who defines it?  I watched some debates get to the point of raised voices and emotionally charged words.   The list by Darren brought out some of the points debated.  From the comments on the post, the debates go on.  I can see how each person could come to the conclusions that they have.  I attended a meeting of the Gorilla Girls that are fighting discrimination against women in the art world.  Museum curators believe men are more creative than women.  Strange to see such prejudices exist in the Art world.  I proposed the possibility that children are loaded with creativity and it is systematically schooled out of them.  I remember hearing the story of the little boy that drew hundreds of flowers for his mother in every color.  But when he went to school the only flower the teacher accepted was a red tulip with green leaves.  Over time the only thing the boy would draw were red tulips with green leaves.  One of the theories I encountered about becoming a multiple is that it takes the creativity of child's mind to create two worlds in one body.  The splits were a creative way of solving a problem that would overwhelm most adults.  My first split at age 5 helped me survive.  Then other splits followed as the effectiveness of the first split was proven useful.  I would be curious what my 7th grade teacher would have said now about my drawings, wood working, and photographs.  I believe creativity is one of the gifts we are all born with and culture, experience, and ourselves determine what we do with it.  The list to me were different aspects of a very large entity that permeates all things.  I would go so far as calling creativity the spark of eternity; it defies description.

One Man's Opinion

 Darren Rowse  -  8:24 PM (edited)  -  Public


9 Attitudes of Highly Creative People
I'd love your opinion on this and what I've left out in comments

1. Curiosity
Learning to ask ‘why’, ‘what if’ and ‘I wonder if…’ are great questions to build into your life if you want to be a more creative person.

2. Seeing Problems as Interesting and Acceptable
One of the problems of the Western mindset is that we often see problems or obstacles in life as unacceptable parts of life. We avoid pain or suppress it when it comes and in doing so don’t often see and feel symptoms that are there to tell us something important.

Creative people see problems as a natural and normal part of life.

3. Confronting Challenge
In fact more than just seeing problems and challenges as 'normal' and not to be run away from - creative people often have a fascination with problems and are drawn to them because they present opportunity.

Many of the most creative ideas through out history have come from people facing a challenge or crisis and rather than running from it asking ‘how can I overcome this’?

4. Constructive Discontent
Creative people often have an acute awareness of what’s wrong with the world around them – however they are constructive about this awareness and won’t allow themselves to get bogged down in grumbling about it – they take their discontent and let it be a motivation to doing something constructive.

5. Optimism
Creative people often have a deeply held belief that most (if not all) problems can be solved. No challenge is too big to be overcome and no problem cannot be solved (this doesn’t mean they’re always happy or never depressed – but they don’t generally get stumped by a challenge).

6. Suspending Judgment
The ability to hold off on judging or critiquing an idea is important in the process of creativity. Often great ideas start as crazy ones – if critique is applied too early the idea will be killed and never developed into something useful and useable. (note – this doesn’t mean there is never a time for critique or judgement in the creative process – it’s actually very important – but there is a time and place for it).

7. Seeing Hurdles as leading to improvements and solutions
This relates to some of the above – but by ‘hurdles’ I mean problems and mistakes in the creative process itself. Sometimes it’s on the journey of developing an idea that the real magic happens and it’s often out of the little problems or mistakes that the idea is actually improved.

8. Perseverance
Creative people who actually see their ideas come to fruition have the ability to stick with their ideas and see them through – even when the going gets tough. This is what sets apart the great from the good in this whole sphere. Stick-ability is key.

9. Flexible Imagination
I love watching a truly creative person at work when they’re ‘on fire’. They have this amazing ability to see a problem or challenge and it’s many potential solutions simultaneously and they have an intuitive knack at being able to bring previously disconnected ideas together in flashes of brilliance that seem so simple – yet which are so impossible to dream up for the average person.

Is Creativity tied to Personality Type or Can it be Learned?
As I read through this list of traits of creative people – the question that I find myself asking is whether creativity is tied to personality type or whether it can be learned?

My own uneducated answer to this question is – ‘yes’ (to both options).

- Some people are just creative – they don’t train themselves to think like they do and they often don’t even know that they are any different from the rest of us – it’s just who they are.

- However I believe that we can all enhance our ability to be creative over time.

What Do You Think

What would you add to the list of attitudes/traits above of creative people?

Also - do you think creativity is more to do with personality or can it be learned?

Mob Fun

This was from one of my emails that come to my inbox to lift me and share smiles.  I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.

http://inspirationmanifestation.com/1179/sound-of-music-flash-mob/

My daughter introduced me to this kind of meet me at the station and lets have fun videos.  I already shared one before.  I don't know why but it just seems like the ultimate in fun to do something like this.

Awareness + Responsibility = Power

Started work yesterday at the school.  I fell asleep as soon as I got home and with only a few brief wakeups I slept for 12 hours.  It was awesome.  I haven't slept 12 hours in years.  I feel so much better.  I woke up in time to check my comments and head back to school.

The comment I read was from Jonsi.  She wrote:

"I wanted to blog about it because I think the "I'm not perfect" excuse is ridiculous. No one is asking ANYONE to be perfect. We're only asking for responsibility, accountability, and respect"

She really captured what I am trying to say.  What was even more amazing was what I read afterward while eating breakfast.  (I am struggling through a book called Boundaries and Relationships - knowing, protecting, and enjoying the self by Charles L Whitfield.  Tough read for me since most of the information is written like he assumes I know what he is talking about.  I am suspecting his audience of choice is other counselors not people like me with severe PTSD and no concept of boundaries, healthy or otherwise.)

This was way cool:
"We reclaim our personal power through a process of increasing awareness and by taking responsibility for our well being and functioning: Power = Awareness + Responsibility.  And part of that power is by setting boundaries and limits."

Wow.  It was like all the things I struggled with wrapping my mind around came together in this one statement.  I am not perfect and I am aware I am not perfect and I take responsibility for my imperfections.  What I didn't realize that this is a major key to personal power.  I now understand when I hear the excuse, "I'm not perfect" or the variation "That's just the way I am" I get so frustrated.  It is like the person giving the excuse is wallowing in their imperfection refusing to change anything.  Like a pig wallowing in mud, they are content to give away their power to change and improve our relationship.  I ain't perfect.  If I know I been bad, I have every intention of taking responsibility for what I have done and apologize to the appropriate party involved and learn better ways to behave.  I ain't perfect, but I am pretty good.  I can keep working on being better because I like being healthy but I am still acceptable as I am right now.  As my awareness increases I want to improve myself to meet my new standard of being.  But for some people, no matter how good I get, I ain't good enough because they would rather blame me than get out of their own mud.  Just  a lot of thoughts that seem to have come together with a bang for me.  Thanks for the many comments that helped get me here.

I have something fun planned for tomorrow.  Enjoy.   

I'm NOT perfect excuse

A comment on my last post I am bringing here:

Laurel Hawkes has left a new comment on your post "Perfection":
Thanks, I really needed this, this morning, as I overheard NM telling a friend on the phone that ungrateful children have unreasonable expectations of their parents, who are imperfect people and did the best they knew how. I was proud of myself for not exploding. I sent myself to my room. :-) 

Sometimes people will use the "I'm not perfect" to excuse their behavior and not take responsibility for what they can change.  Have you ever heard some one say, "Well nobody is perfect," rather than accepting responsibility for their behavior?  When I say I don't need to be perfect, I am thinking along the lines of learning that I don't need to spend 30 minutes a day cleaning the bathroom.  FLYlady's swish-n-swipe in 3 minutes is more than sufficient to keep the bathroom looking good.  However, if I have hurt someone's feelings or acted out of line shrugging my shoulders and stating "I am not perfect," to me is dodging responsibility for my actions.  Also I am fully aware that saying, "I am not perfect and did the best I knew how," needs to be considered very carefully.  How many people know doctors that smoke?  I would say that any doctor would know exactly why smoking is unhealthy, yet if they choose to smoke anyway, they are not doing the best they can.  I know as a parent, I knew I could have done better.  Many times I have felt terrible that I didn't do better.  Bottom line there are some things that I do that I truly don't know a better way of doing things.  

I try to change when I learn a better way of doing something.  When I worked at the university, I was always shocked when students would blow off a professors suggestion without considering their ideas.  Don't get me wrong, I argued with more than one professor since they are not perfect.  I also considered their perspective valuable since they were all world class artists.  Refusing to learn from others, refusing to consider what can be improved, does not constitute doing the best you can.  Refusing to learn a better way to live does not mean you tried to do your best.  I remember hearing wonderful advice from my mother which she herself did not follow.  If she can say it, why doesn't she do it?  I have problems with my weight.  I know I am not doing the best I know how when I buy German Chocolate brownies and proceed to eat it all myself. (By the way, it is really yummy.)  I know I am not doing the best I can when I know the proper diet and medication I should be taking and refuse to do it.  Taking a step back from perfectionism is taking some of the pressure off of myself.  Continuing counseling and improving how I interact with people is a goal to improve interpersonal relationships.  I may not behave perfectly and I may not always do the best I can, but I can take responsibility for my mistakes and work at improving how I treat others and myself.  Perfection is fragile and the slightest error becomes a complete fail since that makes it no longer perfect.  I prefer the grading system.  90% is still an A.  This journey to become a healthy person is a fascinating challenge and part of the process is accepting I am not perfect therefore there is room for improvement.  But that doesn't mean I can't enjoy where I am at right now.  May each of you enjoy imperfect happiness today.