Occupy your creativity

Each of us is given the power to create our lives. With your mind and your hands, you can create objects of beauty, useful tools, the great American novel, the next Big Thing, and, yes, wealth.

The only limits on this power are the limits you invent: I don't have the time. I don't have the money. I don't have the talent. Some greedy SOB won't let me. The government won't let me. Corporate goons won't let me. Illegal aliens are stealing my opportunity. Union thugs are preventing my progress.

You invented all of those limits, or you bought into the lie that "I can't." But you can.

What would you like to create with your mind and your hands? What have you already created? Let the rest of us see.

Create it. Share it. It's easier than ever to do both.

Today

Here's your blank page. What are you going to do with it?

No matter how hard you try to surrender control, and how much you want someone else to make the decisions for you, what you do today is entirely your choice and your responsibility.

Being fearless

From Seth Godin in Linchpin:

Fearless doesn't really mean "without fear." What it means in practice is, "unafraid of things that one shouldn't be afraid of." Being fearless means giving a presentation to an important customer without losing a night's sleep. It means being willing to take intellectual risks and to forge a new path. The fear is about an imagined threat, so avoiding the fear allows you to actually accomplish something ...

The linchpin feels the fear, acknowledges it, then proceeds. I can't tell you how to do this; I think the answer is different for everyone. What I can tell you is that in today's economy, doing it is a prerequisite for success.

"Refuse to be Afraid" doesn't mean never feel anxious or scared. It means acknowledging the fear and bringing it under control to the point where you can move forward in freedom. Today, Refuse to be afraid.

A different take on the shirtless dancing guy: Convince a woman

This video from Derek Sivers is very interesting, informative and entertaining, but I see something slightly different than he does.

I love how Derek uses the imagery from a 2009 festival to explain how a "lone nut" becomes the leader of a movement and how important the "first follower" becomes, and I'm not alone. This is an acclaimed analysis with 1.1 million-plus YouTube views as of this writing.

But I disagree about the "tipping point," where he says, "Now here come 2 more, then 3 more. Now we've got momentum. This is the tipping point! Now we've got a movement! As more people jump in, it's no longer risky. If they were on the fence before, there's no reason not to join now. They won't be ridiculed, they won't stand out, and they will be part of the in-crowd, if they hurry."

If you've never seen the video, go ahead, check it out. It's fun. I'll wait.

There's one crucial detail I think Derek missed about the "3 more" who give the dancers the necessary momentum to turn the little party into a crowd. Did you spot it? Because the camera is shaky it's a little hard to see.

At least one of the newcomers is a woman.

It takes 22 seconds for the first follower to arrive, and almost a full minute before a third dancer joins in. But not until the 80-second mark, when the women join in, does the movement really take off.

Until the moment that the first lady starts dancing, it's just 3-5 guys acting goofy. When she gets there, it's a social event. The first female follower makes it more comfortable for other women to join, and you know how men feel about women.

Derek Sivers knows a lot more about marketing and running a business than I do, but I daresay his theory here needs a small amendment. Never underestimate the power of the opposite sex. The first female follower of a movement - or the first male to join a female-initiated movement - can convert a few folks dancing alone into a campaign.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end

The book is ready. Although the "official" launch is about a week away, you can have it now.  If you were one of the folks who volunteered to ready the semifinal draft last month, you will get your hard copy shortly after the launch-launch. Call this a "soft opening." After a year or so of tinkering and a month or so of hard labor, it's good to be here and be able to say, "I made this!"

This collection of 15 essays began to form itself into a book when Wally Conger quoted Rhinoceros Success author Scott Robert Alexander’s blog: “No one knows what is going to get your pistons pumping except you. Write your own motivational book! You don’t have to worry about proper sentences, spelling or punctuation. No one is going to read it except you.”

And Wally followed it up with: “Got a motivational book inside of YOU? I bet you do. And maybe someday you’ll be willing to share it with the rest of us.” That was the push that I needed.

I wrote the book I needed to read. After hearing from my test readers, I think it has something to say. I hope you'll agree!

Now that we're on the subject, do you have a motivational book inside of YOU? I believe you do. You might want to get started, and there's no time like now — in fact, there is ONLY now.

Waste no time on hate or judgment

When you throw a ball as hard as you can into the sky, it will arc and fall to the ground some distance away. When you throw a ball as hard as you can into the ground, it will plant itself at your feet. Either act expends a great deal of energy.

Every moment you spend on hate is a moment you could have been loving. Every moment you spend passing judgment on someone else’s words or actions is a moment you could have been working to improve your own words or actions.

It takes energy to tear down, and it takes energy to build up.

There is no more destructive scream of consciousness than: I hate you! or I hate this! There is no more exhilarating scream of consciousness than I love you!

Jesus said a lot of wise things, but he boiled it all down to two essential purposes:

Rejecting the tyranny of being picked

On impulse last month, I made two of the best decisions I've made in a long time with regard to this book I'm about to release, A Scream of Consciousness.

First, I popped onto Facebook and asked for 10 people willing to read the manuscript and make suggestions. By day's end I had more than 10, which was a boost of confidence in itself.

Then the suggestions came in, and the book is quickly becoming even better than I'd hoped. From a subtle change to the subtitle to the addition of a closing chapter, all of the ideas from my "editors" have been useful, engaging and constructive – even the tough criticisms, or perhaps especially those.

Writing like ...

At various points in my life, I wanted to write like Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Ray Bradbury, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Seth Godin, Bruce Springsteen, John Sebastian ...

Somewhere along the way while I was trying to write like them, I started to write like Warren Bluhm.

Made for these times

"I keep looking for a place to fit where I can speak my mind..."

The mark of a great artist is that she puts words or images to a thought or feeling that is inside many people but hasn't been expressed in a way that most of us will understand. Brian Wilson is a great artist.

In the song "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times," Wilson puts words and music to the awkward feeling that each and every one of us feels when we recognize there is no one else in the world quite like "me."

"I've been trying hard to find the people That I won't leave behind ..."

The search for friendship, the search for meaning, the search for "fitting in." Ultimately we won't find complete fulfillment from other people. John Maxwell writes about being in the audience when someone asked his wife if "John makes you happy" and getting surprised when she responded, "No."

The debt conundrum

The car is starting to squeak a lot more than it used to, the suspension may be shot soon, and it's overdue for a transmission flush - but I have to make the monthly payments first. I should be saving up to buy the car that will replace this one - and the computer that will replace this one - and the lawn tractor that will replace the one I bought five years ago - but instead I am spending hundreds of dollars a month to pay the balances on the car loan and the credit cards that I haven't used in more than a year.

And that's the problem with debt. A debt is a trade - you exchange your future income for the money to buy what you want NOW.

The cost of having it now is a little thing called interest. So the $10,000 used car costs you $12,500. Is it worth it to have it NOW? That depends on whether you could have used the other $2,500.

Essentially you are gambling that nothing goes wrong for the life of the obligation.