I have heard many people say that they don’t think they are creative. Rubbish! You are creative. You have creativity inside of you for something. Most of us live our lives without ever using the creative ability that we have been given. Here’s a little test you can take to see what your creativity lies in.
Keeping an ideas book
Ideas are like gold to those that capture them. Consider this quote from eclectic film director David Lynch:
“The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you’re dead.” courtesy of: Think Exist.
What do you have ideas about? I didn’t realise that I had so many ideas about various things until I started writing them down. As I began to study the ideas, I noticed how I could use them in my work. Some of them helped me to understand issues I was having with other people and so on. You may really like gardening. There will be moments throughout the day when your ideas about gardening will come to you. Do yourself a favour and write down that idea. You will forget it if you don’t!
What to do with your ideas once you write them down
Make a commitment to follow them through. Even if you can’t do it right now make plans to do it soon. The ideas you follow through on you probably wouldn’t have if you hadn’t of written them down! I know, it sounds stupid but keeping an ideas book helped me to gain an edge in my life and I know if you do it in yours it will help you too.
Woolworths has always been a fairly heartless conglomerate, I thought, since they decided to demolish some bushland at Maleny to build a supermarket that nobody visits. However, this morning I was surprised when I went to fill up the Falcon and discovered 10% ethanol fuel with a short description next to the bowser on why they use the fuel. The price was cheaper too which is good considering my Falcon chews it up around the city.
A decision with heart
Strategically this is a good move for Woolworths because it shows that they don’t just bulldoze bushland they are prepared to invest (with Caltex I might add) in the distribution of cleaner burning fuels. So why is this a heart decision? Making a choice for the environment is jumping on the bandwagon but it’s still good to see it actually happening. This planet is suffering thanks to us so we need to do something about it. Industry leaders like Caltex and Woolworths have shown us the way and I think it’s interesting that they are out in front of the pack. Good on you.
A heart choice for Ford
I think Ford need to follow suit here. I have had some problems with my Falcon but one of the biggest that will stop me from buying another one when I trade up is the cost of fuel and the damage such a car can do to the environment. Something happened to be when I had kids I got soft. How about it Ford… make a Falcon that’s fuel efficient that runs of clean burning fuel? Surely we have the technology to do that now? C’mon give it a good ‘Aussie’ go.
Can you imagine getting up every morning and working until you went to bed? What if you made a choice to dedicate your life to a certain cause and all you got in return was criticism and persecution? Well that’s what my wife puts up with everyday. She is a stay at home mother. For this reason, she is my hero. Why?
My wife the hero
I really admire people who stick to their values. My wife is one person who always stands up for what she believes and never backs down. If the world had more people in it who made an attempt to live from their values, in this way, I think we would be much better off as a society. There is another reason why my wife is my hero. She has to put up with me!
Hero’s do what it takes even when nobody else will
By definition a hero is someone who does what they know they have to do when nobody else stands up to do it. There is a person in my life who had a major tragedy when her “husband” decided that life would be better, living with his parents in another country, instead of being around for his very young son. So who stood up to help? My wife. For the past two years she has been helping out to get this person back on her feet by taking her kid three days a week so she can work to support herself. This is what I admire the most about her. She is always there to help in a time of need.
The most important thing about a hero
A hero stands up without thinking about the cost to themselves. They are humble. Not false humility where people lower themselves to make themselves seen. I mean they just get on with it. No mess and no fuss. That’s what a real hero is. These are the people you can’t see. The fractured lines in between the elements of reality we all take for granted.
Life is filled with people who are overly selfish. People who step over each other to get ahead and at the expense of others hurt people recklessly and thoughtlessly. Every now and again somebody steps up to make a difference. The thing is when you ask them why they will always answer, ‘Because it has to be done.’ You may not be a hero but I guarantee you will know someone who is. If you know a person like that remember them. Do something for them without them knowing it. I guarantee you it will give you joy beyond measure.
There was been a lot of hoo hah about digg in the last 24 or so hours. Like most people I am sure we don’t want to be unproductive when it comes to life. However, I must admit to having Diggitis from time to time. Last semester I was teaching Mobile Workforce Technologies and some IT students (if you are reading this I had a great time) pointed out my stumble bar, I was caught out. I frequently used the web in that course because it’s about the leveraging power of social media, blogging, wikis and so on and the social ideas that underpin them. Come to think of it I probably should be talking about it on this blog a bit more shouldn’t I? As the title suggests the subject was all about how ‘mobile’ technologies influence the way work is designed and implemented. We used a wiki to make students write their own textbook about the world of mobile technologies. Although, towards the end it became more about educating people about online collaboration and co-learning but that’s another story. Sorry, tangent!
Anyway, the students pointed out to me that I had a stack of tools on top of my browser for stumbling. I have since cleaned it up. I can tell you that at the time I had just become acquainted with stumbling and it’s very addictive.
Do you have Diggitis?
I sometimes get it. It’s a hypnotic state that induces people into random clicking of most of the trivial information that makes the Digg front page. I have to force myself to do something else. If you get Diggitis I can tell you that you will have to work very hard to break out of it. It’s no wonder these sites become popular. For me, I don’t use Digg all that often, I prefer Stumbleupon myself. I guess you could call that Stumbleitis. I don’t really want to say ‘Reddititis’ because it sounds like a serious disease or deliciousitis either for that matter but you get my point.
What can you do about it?
The main thing you can do is be positive and set targets. The key thing to note is that whilst you are doing it you may find yourself running out of time to do other important things. If you are digging at work, or stumbling or whatever, the chances are you should be working. Here are three things you can do immediately that will reduce the amount of time you spend on social media sites:
Set daily goals: The reason we end up aimlessly clicking is because we are unsure of what our daily targets may be. It’s important the you keep a close eye on what you are doing and make sure that you are happy with your daily tasks. If you aren’t then spend 5-10 minutes making a daily list of what you need to do that’s very important. Take a piece of paper and stick it in front of your computer.
Give yourself a time limit: When you start on a site set a time limit of two to three minutes and then switch it off. Don’t fall into a Digg trance. By setting yourself reasonable limits and time to do it you will free up a small amount of time to enjoy it whilst not sacrificing the majority of productivity.
Use your imagination: Imagine what it’s like to fired. Really think about it. Can you see what it looks like? Good remember that next time you spend more than your allocated time stumbling!
The key thing to hold in your mind is that stuffing around on social media is fun, entertaining and interesting. However, you have to get things done in order to be successful. Very few people are successful on the basis of not working. Almost everyone who is someone worked at least somewhat to get there. So, I recommend moderation in stumbling and digging. If you don’t you will you be stuck with Diggitis.
Recently I have noticed that there has been growing angst on the web towards scientologists. At the moment I am reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and it’s a fairly interesting read. Have a look at these articles that have been floating around on Digg:
I could go on and on. Between them these articles have over 25000+ diggs. So why the sudden angst with the Church of Scientology? In trying to make sense of this I went to google trends. Have a look at this below:
Notice near the “F” the scientology search is beginning to spike after a few lean years. Google trends is showing an emerging trend here which I think can be explained by the interest in Digg and Reddit (there are just as many rants on scientology there as well). Here we see the tipping point in action. So who was the ‘Maven’ or ‘Salesperson’ who tipped the story. I really think it was syndicated news. Consider doing a scientology search of google news. The recent hacking and war declared by ‘Anonymous‘. But, you can’t ignore the attention it got on Reddit and Digg. A group declaring war on the Scientologists has gotten the attention of the world and all of a sudden all this stuff about them has appeared in social media.
If you search through Digg and Reddit for most popular you will see what I mean. This is power of the tipping point. How a few people can take a few small actions and create such a big fuss. There is a model I studied in the final year of my Bachelor’s degree called the ‘Viable Systems Model‘. One of the underlying concepts is this idea is that complexity (or variety) can be managed by requisite complexity. That is, you can manage complexity so long as you have the power to manage it with a smaller ‘viable’ unit. This is a horrible oversimplification of the model but it proves my point! When something like this springs up on social media sites you have this knock-on effect and all of sudden the few people who started this have attracted the attention of ‘diggers’ and reddit users to the extent that a spike in traffic has been generated.
Whilst I am against the concepts of Scientology as I consider myself a Christan you have to wonder if such attention grabbing tactics are balanced. As I said over 25000 Diggs is an awful lot and I stopped at page 3! Such influence shows me that the media sites on the internet are open to biases and the whims of people. On the other hand it shows us just how powerful social media can be. Do yourself a favour search for Scientology on Google and note the fourth listing and the news. The power of the tipping point in action!
I was bored last night so I wrote a short story about people who never accept responsibility for their actions… enjoy!
The Morning Light
The morning light shone off the window straight into my eyes.I wondered for a moment where I was until I remembered the shackles around my wrists.I was in jail.Not the kind of jail they put criminals in either, the kind of jail they put the nut-jobs in.Welcome to my nightmare.It all began several years ago when I learned off my wife’s death.She was a sweet soul.Incapable of any kind of harm.That’s why, so they tell me, I slashed her throat.I killed her they say.But for the love of God, I don’t remember doing it.I remember finding her and seeing her pale white face splashed with blood.Son of a bitch.How did I get here?
I remember it was an early morning in the bitter cold winter on 1989.I woke up around 7:30 with a slamming headache and a mouth full of sandpaper.You see the night before I had found out I was being ‘retrenched’ so I told my boss precisely what he could do with his job.After about nine hits of Scotch.I was in my prime.The leading marketing executive of Martin, Dunwich and Martin.The most successful ad company in the world.So they said.I never actually bought that kind of hype I just thought wow, that’s cool.You know what it’s like you work for a place long enough you begin to think it’s the best place to be.Especially when the throw money at you.It’s a shame what happened to him.I still don’t know how he got out of the window and fell thirteen stories to his death.You’d think he had it all.Maybe he was pushed?
As I stumbled out of bed I realised something was missing.No wife.Sure, there had been times when I deserved it but we both hit it pretty hard that night.I went to the can to relieve myself and walked downstairs to get my morning coffee.There she was.Naked, lying on the kitchen floor, head smashed open … brains everywhere.I can still see the open mouth and dangling eyeballs.Yuck.It still features in my nightmares even after twenty years.
The cops arrested me of course because I was the only one they could muster up.Don’t get me started about the show trial.You know the rest of the story don’t you?Do you read the papers?I know I do.Sure, they are full of crap but the one thing I can promise you is that I didn’t kill that guard.Or the one after that.It’s a frame up.Each one they put near my cell winds up dead.I swear there is someone following me, I didn’t do it!It’s not me.When they slapped me in here I thought that finally it would stop.No, that poor lady that feeds me is now missing a finger. I am telling you I am innocent.
When they found my lawyer impaled on a javelin they blamed me.I can’t help it if I am good at sports can I?I mean in reality, I may have been the only one to ever have hit the record at high school. But I didn’t do it.I am telling you I didn’t do it.
I am an avid stumbler. I love it. I was pressing the stumble button the other day when I came across a page on the abolition of work. It’s a very insightful post but that’s not why I am mentioning it. It got me thinking. Why do we work and what do we want to work for?
Why do we work?
In a blog post I have a limited amount of space to answer a question of this magnitude. Some do it for joy, they love what they do but I would think that most of us do it to stay alive. Simple answer. The question is: what attracted us to the line of work we are currently undertaking? For me, I liked the idea of teaching and doing research. My kind of research is pragmatic so I am aiming to improve something and study how it’s done. That said, I only really do that 10% of the time I am at work. 90% of the time I am doing admin or some other requirement of my job. So why do I work?
I do it because I have to, not necessarily because I want to. I was reading this morning that we were made to enjoy our life. There are two groups of people I think. Those that do something they enjoy and make it and those the don’t. Those that end up living their live and enjoying it are far and few between. I rarely meet individuals who have taken steps towards their dreams. Perhaps it’s the overwhelming security complex we have as people I can’t say for sure.
I remember a while ago I was blessed to spend time with a life coach who showed me something about myself I didn’t realise. Every time we talked about something I was dreaming about or something I really wanted to do I had automatically created the excuse for why it wasn’t possible. I was particularly afraid of promoting myself. She taught me to visualise a stinky Mullet every time I felt that fear. After a few times of doing it I no longer felt that fear. I suspect the most successful of us don’t stop to anticipate what might go wrong for too long. If they do I can’t say that it bothers them all that much.
I think we work out of necessity but when you get right down to it… I believe we work because we have to. Obviously when you see people enjoying their work and succeeding you have to wonder… what is it that they do that’s different to me? I have found this one thing. They pursue their goals relentlessly as though they already had it. I will leave you with that thought.
What do we work for?
Why we work is really a no brainer. What we work for is definitely a more complex question. I believe it’s a question of how we identify ourselves. We usually make the mistake of attaching our ’self’ or ‘identity’ to our work and make that apart of us. Who told you had to work the same job your whole life? You are not your job (thanks Fight Club). What you do is not you. You are you. You with all your personality traits, habits and problems that’s you. What you do… you do out of necessity because you have to do to survive in this culture. If you are a go getter you will reach your goals and do something different. But guess what you will still be you and not what you do. Try this: next time someone asks you what you do for a living say, ‘Well I work for such and such doing this or that.’ Don’t say, I’m a lawyer because you’re not a lawyer that’s what you do… that’s behaviour… it’s not you.
I believe the majority of us work because of our identity. We think or have been brainwashed more likely, into thinking that work is us. You are a human being. You can’t be anymore than that. You have a uniqueness, talents, gifts which you need to offer to the world (I am saying this to me big time). But, you are not the job you have. You are not what you drive where you live or what you eat. You are you. That’s it, baby.
As you go about your weekend why not relax in the knowledge that you don’t have to be anything. Work is what you do for money. I am hoping that when I can come up with something of more value to offer instead of a 9-5 then I won’t have to work as much. I am certainly going to have to stretch myself to get a house. As I heard someone say once: You don’t work for money you have something of value you offer to someone who exploits it so they can make more than you. Put another way, you have been hired because of your value to solve a problem. That doesn’t mean you will do it forever. One day you may come up with another way to add value and people will exchange more money for that. It ain’t the money it’s the value you create.
So we work out of necessity (most of us) and we work for our identity. I wonder if you accepted a different identity if your behaviour would change? What if you began seeing yourself living a dream? How would that impact your life?
This part two of an on-going series of articles about bringing the heart back to business. Click here to read part one.
A few weeks ago my wife and I acquired a couple of watches from my father that he had been given for free. Our first thought was let’s take them to the local pawn shop to see if we can get some money back for them. I know… what can I say it’s the entrepreneur in me. When we got there we saw what I think is a blight on pawn shops. A lady who was white, shaking and clearly in need of a fix was standing at the counter with a pile of DVD’s. I looked around and it occurred to me… what kind of business profits off the failure of society more so than the pawn shop? That aside, I noticed something else. And yes, considering I am on dreams, the heart and so on at the moment (for some reason) I noticed that I was standing in the house of broken dreams.
When you travel into a store like the one I went to you notice the guitars, the drum kits, the stereo systems and the like on display. How did they get there? Drug users, failed musicians, trades people who can’t get work and so on put them there. Where do the desperate, the failures and the like go when there is nowhere else to go?
The pawn shop is a business that makes it’s profit on broken dreams
The world is a harsh place. For every success there are a hundred failures. If you don’t believe me take a trip to any major city and have a look at a pawn shop. It’s the place where the end of line has been reached for a lot of people. People who had dreams of their own, desires but somehow missed out. These are the ones that didn’t make it. When I went to the store it really struck me how heart wrenching it is when you have had a dream in your grasp and it was ripped out of your hands. You do get desperate. You do begin to think… what did I do to deserve this? The answer to that is beyond this post… sure I could reason it out… blame people, God, whoever. But at the end of the day the broken dream is still there isn’t it?
Should we blame the pawn shops for cashing in on broken dreams?
The question perhaps should be framed this way: Why do pawn shops exist? They exist because there is a demand for them. This stems from the need for people to sell something or offload something in exchange for something else. Eventually as a meditated on the situation I came to the point in my thinking where I reached a paradox. Here we have a business that takes away things in exchange for money because people have a need. The businesses like Cash Converters exist because someone is there to feed them. The need is the problem not the shop. Take away the need and you take away the shop. This raises another question:
Why are there so many broken dreams?
What happens to a life when it falls short of it’s potential? I don’t really know. I can say that I was reminded of it at Cash Converters the other day when I saw all of the lost hope in the eyes of the people there. The reality is why does a business decide to profit of broken dreams. I am not one of those people who believe that businesses can sell whatever they like. Greed is not good.
Businesses need to bring the heart back
Making money can be done in a way that society is improved and not devalued. I think establishments like Cash Converters elevate the status of the dollar above human worth. As Gordon Gecko says: ‘Greed is good’. A business that profits off broken dreams and people who do the same have lost their heart. Business can be conducted in a way that it profits both the owners and the customers without destroying lives. So, I hear you say: What about some examples?
Examples of businesses with heart
The first place that comes to mind for me, is Gloria Jeans coffee. On this page you can read about the things they are doing to build a better future in various communities. W.I.S.E is another example of what I am talking about and you can watch this video below to explain it better than I can:
This is social entrepreneurship. A more recent famous example can be found in Richard Branson’s decision to invest future profits in reducing global warming:
What about another example? Imagine taking over a company at a young age and running yourself into the ground with stress? That’s exactly what Ricardo Semler did. To combat that he set out to build a democratic workplace where people got to vote for their managers, negotiate their pay scales, choose their work hours and so on. If you are ever in the mood I would recommend reading the book calledMaverick or the Seven Day Weekend. Recently the 7:30 report ran this story on him:
I could go on for hours citing examples of people who have changed their businesses by putting the heart first. For me, a business should be about building dreams not destroying them. It should be about letting those who make it help build something for those who can’t. It’s a two way street that goes beyond personal wealth into the area of social wealth where we build this world as well as success. I don’t think there can be anything wrong with that?
This post is the first in a number of posts on bringing the heart back to business. It’s the theme of the month at the moment!
According to this news article the latest round of research is telling us that Australia has 18 cities out of the top 50 least affordable cities in the entire world. The shocking statistic for me was that the place where I grew up, the sunshine coast, is the 2nd least affordable in Australia and the 7th least in the world! I was gobsmacked! This was the place where my parents bought a house for five figures in the early nineties. My how times have changed. The average style of home is somewhere in the $550,000 range and that’s not even that close to the water. I remember when Mooloolaba was a bum haven with a shop that sold bongs. Not so anymore.
One positive for me is that at least the world’s most expensive city wasn’t in this country. It’s actually Los Angeles. For residents of L.A. I am sure this is an honour they could do without. We aren’t too far off with people on the Sunshine Coast having to pay more than 8 times what they earn to get a mortgage. To be honest, I will continue renting … for the moment.
Posted by Luke in 
