Tag: creativity

  • Morgan's über-fantasy world (how about rewriting YOUR story?)

    Morgan's über-fantasy world (how about rewriting YOUR story?)

    This is a blog post about my fantasy world.  Before you click away into the nether lands of cyberspace, let me tell you why this might be important to you.

    We all live in a fantasy world.

    From the most brilliant scientists to the most fundamentalist religionists, our fantasies define who we are.

    In this second decade of the third millennium, we like to pretend that we’re “data driven” – that we are smart and savvy – supported by the latest info-overload purporting to tell us who we are and where we come from.

    It doesn’t matter whose data you use or where it came from. Data are neutral. Data have no meaning apart from the meaning we give them. In science, we tell stories about the data based on our hypotheses and theories. Some of those are some pretty darn smart sounding stories. So smart sounding that we often confuse them for the “TRUTH,” so help you God.

    In other areas of our corner of the vast Universe, people tell very different stories about their world. They look at different data, or they choose to tell a different story about the same data. Or both. This results in sometimes very different stories about who we are and how we came to be.

    You grew up telling yourself a story, and so did I. Everyone does. That story defines everything about how we show up in the world.

    There’s no problem with having a story. It’s how we make meaning out of the vast reams of data that we are exposed to in every moment. The problem occurs later on, after the story gets fixed – cemented like Krazy Glue – into our psyche. Not to be rooted out or changed, we cling to our story as if it were the TRUTH, never again allowing any information to come to us that doesn’t fit with that story.

    Then it often goes South. Many of these stories we glue into our minds impose upon us self-inflicted misery, disconnection, judgement of others, lack of self love, and worse. Despite those problems they cause, we cling to the stories as if they were some kind of “unchangeable TRUTH.” We cling to our stories, and we cling to our misery, lack of self love, judgement, and disconnection.

    I got sick of that and decided to change my story.

    It wasn’t a conscious decision. It would have been a much faster transformation if I had recognized my story for what it was, and intentionally rooted it out. Alas, I was not that lucky. (I was going to write “smart” there, but smart people are just as prone to telling themselves stories as the not-as-smart. Telling stories is an equal opportunity habit).

    So, my story began with growing up in a scientific household. My father was a famous chemist and my brother is a well known physicist. In our household, there was the truth as laid out by “science”, and there was all that “bogus crap that other people believe.”

    Little did I know that there were people all over the world looking at us scientists, and lumping our stories into the category of “bogus stuff that other people believe.” I suppose that it dawned on me at some point in mid-childhood that ours wasn’t the only story out there. But it didn’t matter, because our story was RIGHT and theirs were obviously WRONG.

    I was so wrapped up being RIGHT that I paid no attention to whether my story was bringing me any joy, love, fun, or peace. According to my story, emotional stuff like that was just a bunch of side effects of biochemistry that weren’t all that important.

    What was important was SCIENCE. What was important was Figuring It All Out (TM). What was important was being smarter than those ignoramuses who hadn’t yet Figured It All Out.

    My Ego was bloated with facts and figures to PROVE my case, a bit like one of those dead cows I’ve seen floating in the Colorado River. Yeah, it was that gross.

    And what did I figure out with my high-minded story?

    It’s a Random Universe and We Are Meaningless Players

    In that so-called scientific story I’d adopted, the universe started out for some unknown reason, and since then, everything that happened has been a product of randomness.

    My story about our random universe was based on ideas about what happened a very very long time ago. That was long before any humans were around to measure things with our fancy instruments. There were no weather vanes on Saturn to tell which way the wind was blowing… So to call it “scientific” is assuming that we know far more than we actually do about what was going on back then.

    Anyway… in that story, you and I and everyone else came from something a bit like green pond scum. Chance pond scum turned into chance human beings. By chance we were the fittest in a brutal, harsh, dog-eat-dog world. We out gunned and outsmarted the other species to ascend to the top.

    And the prize? A sort of clinging, tenuous survival on this planet, where at any moment we could be wiped out by war, meteorite, or other disaster… and then the cockroaches will ascend to replace us.

    Worse, because we wiped out so many other species (and later, races) on our clinging way to the top… guilt for our sins is mandatory. We are just selfish, brutish beings… not much more than a blight on the planet. It would all soon come to an end, a just dessert. When I was 13, I dreamed that my dog Bear and I were going to go live in a cabin in Alaska to wait it all out. Bear was the perfect companion for my plan, a stout St. Bernard – German Shepherd mix who could probably outlive me in that kind of scenario. He just needed a keg on his neck to carry our food and drink for the apocalypse.

    My daughter recently came to me and said: “I think it would be nice if we could just have a big reset and start it all over with far fewer humans.” WOW.  Now she’s carrying around a similar story, even though I didn’t consciously pass it on to her. That particular story of humans-as-blight is a prevalent one, especially in liberal/progressive circles**.

    (** I’m only picking on this story because it’s the one I’d adopted. There are plenty of other just-as-dysfunctional stories that people tell themselves, like the one that says we were all perfect until some rib-cum-woman came along, got hypnotized by a snake to bite into an apple, and that perfection was permanently ruined by this heinous act. Implicit in this particular story is the sin and temptation inherent in humans – especially women).

    That story led down a dark path for me. The more I reinforced it as I pursued my professor job as a bigwig scientist, the more it translated into dysfunction in my relationships with family, friends, and colleagues. “Things could collapse at any time” – I lived in constant fear due to this story. I perused the economic and environmental websites daily to reconfirm just how bad things were becoming. That focus on collapse became a personal reality for me. In 2010 UNC pulled the rug out from under a big project without notice, and that led to my angry resignation. According to my story – as just one more sign of how bad things were, they’d screwed me over for space for years, and things were just getting worse and worse.

    That story led to a lot of personal turmoil. It led to turmoil with my family. It led to bouts of depression. It was unfun and unhealthy, and I’m still recovering from it all.

    And it gets worse…

    My story also said I am unlovable. My story said that since I grew up with a peculiar birth defect, “I’m not going to be accepted.” It came from a childhood where my mom walked out the door…never to return. Whenever I saw something I didn’t like, I projected onto it a sense that “it is personal, against me…” instead of realizing that most people are just living each in their own world. My mom didn’t leave because of me, she left because of her own issues. Yet my story for all those years had been telling me that I somehow caused that.

    This story didn’t allow me to believe in LOVE. I mean, I believed in the concept of a biochemically-derived love, but it was just a function of neurotransmitters, and nothing more than that. Loving myself wasn’t on my radar, because it seems pretty odd to love oneself when love is just a bunch of chemicals in the first place. And….I was suicidal at times. It was bad.

    Why share so much? I do it to illustrate just how a story can paint you into a corner, like that story did for me.

    Then something happened and I got a new story

    Over the past six years, I adopted a completely new story. I took the same “facts” that I did before, and I chose to interpret them in a whole new way. I chose to tell a new story, one that has led to a profound change in my life.

    For a long time, I was afraid to share this with anyone. My new story very different than the previous “scientific” story I carried around. I felt like I would be laughed at for sharing it.

    But it is Just A Story

    Then one day it dawned on me. This is just a story. No more, no less. It is not a matter of who is right or who is wrong. That is a totally unimportant ego distraction that I had been caught up in  (as are many, many other people). I’d been so caught up in the Ego of my story, perhaps because I was a non-Mormon who grew up in Mormon Utah. I felt like I needed to defend my particular view against the very strong views of the nearly all-pervasive church influence around me.

    Yet it’s not just me. Nearly all of us adopt these stories, and then we go out into the world with a sort of missionary zeal for defending our story. We ttry to constantly prove to others that it is right, and we make judgements of those who’ve chosen a different story.

    All the while, we separate ourselves from what’s really important: finding and holding the best story that works for our joy, our peace, our prosperity, our love.

    So, I’m going to tell you my new story – a fantasy I created

    I make no claim about its “rightness.” I make no judgements about the very different stories that others hold. It may offend both some of the hardcore materialist scientists and many of the religious. That doesn’t matter.

    What matters is that you use my story transformation as an example, an illustration of how you can examine your story. You can figure out whether YOUR story is serving you, or whether it’s holding you back from a deeper sense of joy, love, and fun in your life.

    Since I spent my whole life around a scientific worldview, my new story is based on the best I can make of the evidence (not just the mainstream). You may not need as much evidence or data or “logic” for your story, and that’s ok. Those are things I need to justify my story due to my curious upbringing.

    It goes like this:

    In the beginning there was consciousness. It was aware of itself, and of possibility, but there was no medium in which to express itself. It was like a painter without a canvas. It was frustrated and forlorn, until it figured out a way to create a canvas out of itself.

    The canvas (our universe) is part of that awareness, and yet the universe, its canvas, has its own independent existence and progression. It is free to evolve by its own course – and yet all the while is supported through LOVE by that which created it.

    Within that canvas is a vast universe of universes, and there are also a vast series of “intelligences” – only a small fraction of which inhabit physical bodies like ours.

    Our own being came through a process that resembles the Evolution written about by Darwin, but with one difference*. It is not entirely random. Rather, it is driven by a creative process, expressing itself on the tableau of DNA as its canvas. It is driven by a process that has LOVE for its creations – all of its creations – at its core.

    It is not an old white guy with a beard planning out the “perfect scenario.” Far from it. No, it is an awareness that constantly grows and expands, and is joyous at each new development. It paints on the canvas through each evolutionary development. It paints on the canvas through each human idea. It paints on the canvas with each new star system that explodes into being. Sometimes those new developments don’t work, and can’t be sustained. Sometimes they work too well, and take over – squeezing out others.

    *note: remember, this is my own fantasy. If you want to get into a debate about evolution vs whatever (creationism, intelligent design, etc), I won’t join you. That is not the point here. It’s finding a story that makes us happy.

    With each new advancement, it opens up even more new opportunities for further developments. There is no “good” vs “evil” in all of this. The artist loves all of its creation. Evil is only a human creation, a product of people who’ve become disconnected from the love, the creativity, and the joy.

    The artist loves all

    The artist who created the canvas loves all of its creations, even though many of them have become so disconnected from it that they think they evolved randomly from pond slime. Even though they think that the artist doesn’t exist. Even though these creations have forgotten that they are love, and that they should start by loving themselves.

    A conscious being who does not love itself cannot give deep love to another. One cannot giveth of that whicheth one doth not have.

    We came here to explore and to create. We came here to build upon others’ creations. We came here as artists, much like the original artist, to see what great things we can do with the canvas of our life. It’s the canvas we’ve been given, yet many of us devalue it, minimize it, and feel unworthy of it.

    Sadly, like me with my former story, many of us have forgotten. We’ve become lost in a story that says we have to work really really hard to succeed, and if we don’t, we are not worthy and we’ll be left behind in the dust. We’ve become lost in a story that says we are insignificant, unexceptional, and unimportant in this vast (and cold) universe. Many of us get lost in a story that says we are here only to serve others, rather than to live our life to its creative fullest – while serving others through living our lives to their fullest.

    We have the free will to build upon creation with joy and love, or to unplug from it and destroy small parts of it with our hate and our fear. Though a lot of humans have chosen the course of hate and fear, our world is a resilient place. It will take a lot of hate to truly destroy it. Meanwhile, there are more and more of us who are waking up and embracing our true purpose here. We are gaining momentum to displace the hate and the fear. We are likely to triumph, as long as we embrace a better story.

    I like my new fantasy much better.

    It has begun healing my psyche and my relationships, without psychotherapy or pharmaceuticals. It has led me out of depressive episodes, and out of withdrawal from other human beings. I’m not 100% of the way there yet. The painting is by no means complete. We are never done. But I’m making great progress, because of the new story I’ve chosen to tell myself.

    So now it’s your turn. What story are you telling yourself? Is that story helping you be a happier, more connected human being? Or does it have you lost in despair, dysfunction, overwhelm?

    If it’s not serving you, perhaps it’s time to start rewriting that old story into something new. If you need help with that, reach out.

     

     

  • Fear in the Gym, Fear in Life

    Fear in the Gym, Fear in Life

    Today in Lake Tahoe, I felt like a lazy ass because my relatives were up at 5:30 am, clanking around in their bike shoes in the early morning, getting ready to head out to ride 70 miles around the lake, while I lay in the comfy bed…. Finally, the feeling that I needed to do something set in, and I roused myself at around 6:50. I donned my biking gear, filled the pack with cool water, and hopped on my bike to go exploring.

    It is a mountain bike meant for exploring – for crossing nearly any kind of terrain you can throw at it. I’ve had it on mountain peaks and desert valleys, along with many roadways chock full of exhaust-spewing traffic. I got that bike for free. I was visiting a friend who’d bought it on a whim. He’s a surfer and Internet Marketer (with initials FK for those of you in the know…). He’d bought this $4,000 bike, taken it out once or twice, and proceeded to have some kind of wreck which he described as “totally embarrassing” near a busy intersection.

    The wreck didn’t damage the bike or its rider – except for his ego. That was enough to relegate the bike into disuse, out-favored by the 60-some-odd surfboards in his arsenal. Nothing like being in 61st place for favor. For some reason, this conjures the image of a polygamist with 61 wives, who never has time to get to them all… I don’t know where that came from. Can I put that image back into the bottle now, please? No… too late.

    So anyway, there the bike sat, stashed behind the quiver of surfboards and a beautifully restored VW bus, until I came along. It’s the kind of thing that happens in movies. I was in Frank’s place, and saw a water bottle on the counter. Knowing not of the bike, I asked innocently enough: “do you ride much?”

    His answer: “oh, I got a bike and rode it a few times, then totally embarassed myself. Do you want it?”

    I stammered a bit… “what kind of bike is it?” I managed to get out before the silence became embarrassing. As I’d processed the offer, images of old Schwinn cruiser bikes were flashing through my mind, as I calculated whether it would be rude to turn down the offer of a bike – even if a junky, rusted out one. I should have known better. Frank only does things with style. He said: “It’s a pretty good one, I think, I bought it new and just haven’t used it. We can go check it out! I’ll bet it’s about your size.”

    “Okay,” I responded, as I followed him into the surfboard-stuffed garage overlooking the beach in La Jolla. As he dug his way through the piles upon piles of surfboards, I wondered what was going to emerge. The bike finally revealed itself amongst the surfboards, and I beheld a full-suspension 29er Titus mountain bike. If you’re not a mountain biker, here’s the translation: this was a damn fine bike, far better than what I owned at that time. He said: “here you go, want to take it for a ride and see if it will work?”

    “Sure…” I was still doing mental math. “Does he expect me to pay him for it?” I was thinking? Nobody had ever given me anything worth that much before (or since)… After riding it for 30 seconds, I knew that this bike didn’t suck. Those are code-words for: “awesome!”

    I rode back to the place, and asked him “what do you want me to pay you for it?” I still couldn’t wrap my head around getting something like this for free. His answer: “Nothing. take it – it’s yours. Otherwise I’d have to deal with putting it on Craigslist and all the weirdos coming by and looking at it.”

    A price I can’t refuse

    Okay, we can accept that price. And so I became the proud new owner of a fantastic bike at the best price I’ve ever paid. That bike has been all over the Western USA with me, and I’ve ridden it 1,000’s of miles. Occasionally I send Frank pictures of me and the bike – but I think he’s getting tired of random pictures of the bike that he never really grew fond of in the first place.

    Flash forward to now, like one of those 70’s television shows where someone has a reminiscence then returns to the present via a cheesy shimmering effect… and here I am riding my bike around South Tahoe, exploring the trails and roads near the lake to see what’s around and enjoy the morning views.

    Beautiful morning, perfect temperatures. My map of the trails was sketchy, so a couple of times I followed trails through the woods that tapered out into swampland, and I had to turn back before the buzzing mosquitos got to me. Exploration at it’s finest, as I burnt hundreds of calories climbing and descending Tahoe’s hills.

    The pattern interrupt: a gym chock full of people

    At one point, right after I was treated to some incredible lake views, with geese in the foreground and shimmering mountains in the background, I came across a sight that was a total pattern interrupt: a gym whose parking lot was nearly full, boasting “great views” on its sign.

    On my ride, I’d seen, at most, three other cyclists and maybe a handful of runners out enjoying this gorgeous morning. And there at the gym were at least 30 people, packed into a small space with other sweating people, breathing in the sweaty smell as they clanked their weights and pounded the rubber of the treadmills – probably consuming the latest news about the war in the Middle East on the built-in TV screens.

    Wow… really? How could anyone want to be in a gym right now, rather than out enjoying this awesome morning? I was flummoxed.

    Then a thought came to mind. You know how sometimes your mind just speaks a judgement before you can get hold of it and tell it to shut up? (okay, I admit, I like the voice in my head, most of the time).

    Well, in this case it spoke one word to me: fear. Followed by: Fear breeds fear. That’s the only explanation I could come up with for why someone would be in a gym on a day like this.

    Non-judgement is hard

    I try not to judge. I do my darnedest. So instead of deciding that they’re all crazy and weird and screwed up, I went into reflective mode. “They’re not bad people,” I tell myself, “they’re just confused by fear.”

    Fear of the unknown of the outside world. You might get rained on (I did). You might get lost. (I did). God forbid, you might even have a mechanical problem (I didn’t, fortunately!). Worse still: you might be embarrassed by having a wreck or something. You could even get bitten by a mosquito carrying the dreaded West Nile virus, then it’s all over in a blur of fevers and coughs.

    I get it. It’s safer and more controlled to go to a gym. You can get the same workout, every time. In it’s perfect, climate-controlled environment, not much can go wrong. There is almost no risk of any kind of failure.

    And yet… there’s no risk of coming across stunning mountain landscapes… a flock of geese and their goslings, walking the bike across a sandy beach, feeling the morning dew and a few raindrops on your face, smelling the fresh new mountain air. There is no risk of hopping the bike across a fallen log and maybe screwing it up… or maybe not – and feeling the exhilaration, either way. There is no risk.

    You get a certain, prescribed amount of exercise and it’s almost guaranteed. Yet – where’s the joy? Where’s the adventure? Where’s the excitement? Where’s the newness?

    The robotic nation takes over

    I find it bizarre that we humans used our creativity to create great empires and great machines to help us keep those empires running – and then we decided to fall in love with those machines by becoming more like them.

    We plan out every moment of every day to assure climate-controlled comfort at all times.

    God forbid if a new idea should strike us – that’s just “crazy talk” to be dismissed by the more sane and robotic part of us.

    Worse still if we happen to go on an adventure like a mountain bike ride… and run into some kind of challenge. We might not be able to handle it – and our ego would be in shreds.

    Besides, machines are just machines – no different than any of the other machines – and don’t have any special privileges, nor do they deserve a “great life!” – because they’re just machines. So, since we’re trying to be like machines, why should we feel “deserving” of anything great? We shouldn’t: that’s just selfish for a machine to want. Stop it now.

    This gym phenomenon is just a tip of the iceberg in machine-dom. Machines aren’t flexible, creative, and adaptable like humans*. Hell, the other day I saw an article about bacteria that evolved to eat electricity for their energy. Now that’s flexible and creative. Life is spontaneous, creative, adventuresome. Robots are not.

    So why do we pack ourselves into places like the gym, going there for a precisely defined workout, followed by a precisely-defined diet to assure the precisely healthy body fat percentage as specified by the precisely measured statistics coming from the latest studies?

    I have no damn clue, really, except to say that it’s dismaying that many of our lives have come to this. We are not machines!

    We are creative, beautiful, loving beings, meant for more than just living a daily life of machine-dom. We are not here to avoid any variation in circumstance – we are here to adapt to the variations, to roll with the punches, to seek and have adventure and fun.

    We are creators, not robots. Let’s stop trying to live like robots, and start reclaiming our creative, spontaneous humanity.

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    * – this is referring to humans who haven’t already become too robotic….

    ** – Sorry to gym owners and friends of mine who go to the gym. Like I said above, I do not judge you. However, I cannot follow your path, I must create my own, and it doesn’t involve a gym.

  • Got something to create? Watch out for toxic green slime.

    Got something to create? Watch out for toxic green slime.

    This post isn’t for everyone. It’s not for people who want to live a life of consumption or complacency and be content with that.

    No, it’s not for those. If you want to do that, I don’t have any words of assistance for you.

    I do, however, have words for you if you know, deep in your heart, that you want to create something great, but you’ve been holding back all these years because of fear.

    That “something great” can be of any type, shape, or variety.

    Maybe it’s a new business.

    Maybe it’s making a new toy named smudgie-dolls.

    Or perhaps it’s creating great gospel-rock music. Or perhaps even great scientific breakthroughs. Maybe even a grant proposal that rocks the reviewer’s world.

    Who knows.

    It doesn’t matter what the what is. Because all people who have something unexpressed inside struggle with the same issues.

    A sea of toxicity for creators

    The industrialists were creators. They created great factories that churned out widgets that were designed to enhance our lives.

    Ironically, their creations had the effect of generating a whole populace that is deathly afraid of real creating and creativity. So, while the creators of those industrial empires got to express themselves – generations of people who have gone to work for them and been influenced by them have had their creativity stifled by the creating that the industrialists did.

    Just go tell your relatives that you’re going to be in a rock band. Or that you’re going to start a business. Watch their sympathetic, patronizing reactions as the look on their face turns to horror, like you might expect after a cancer diagnosis.

    “Find a real career, like medicine or engineering, so that you can support yourself and your family.”

    I’m not kidding about this. I’ve recently helped someone start a new business to work on a cure for a major disease. This person has suffered from anxieties both internal and external. Externally, she’s felt judged and pressured by colleagues who act like she’s a traitor for doing something positive with her work. Internally, she frequently worries about “what if it fails and I can’t support my family.”

    (She probably would have given up on this journey if it hadn’t been for having the support of a mentor – going it alone in confronting these fears is very difficult).

    Schools fuck it up

    Our education system these days is totally fear driven. In the US, a lot of it comes from politicians and pundits who look at Asia, where they see students accomplishing higher test scores in subjects like math and grammar.

    “We have to get rid of that useless art crap, and spend more time teaching them the basics, so that we can keep up with them damn foreigners…” All the creative stuff gets thrown out the window as “useless” in this fast-moving world.

    Yet that’s the stuff of which all progress is made. It’s the stuff of genius. New cures, new technologies, new works of art – they don’t come from hitting the books harder. They come from unleashing more of the creativity.

    Very few schools focus on helping students with that. Instead it’s all about becoming subservient, listening to the teacher, learning the subject material “correctly” and regurgitating it on the next exam.

    That stuff teaches young people the screwed up lesson that success is all about getting the answers “just right.” Hey, when you’re doing something like creating a new business, there is no “right answer.” If you search for the right answer, you get paralyzed.

    I’ve seen it happen to more than one entrepreneur friend, who goes to seminar after seminar, seeking the “answer” to how to make their business successful… when the answer was inside of that person the whole time, and just needed an expression of creativity to let it out.

    How many world-changers went to Ivory Tower University(ITU)?

    (I almost wrote a university whose name starts with H – but decided their lawyers and/or marketing department might get in a kerfluffle if I mention them by name).

    So, I don’t have fancy statistics to prove my case, but I quickly thought to myself, who are some of the most influential people of the past 100 years that come to mind?

    Some random names that pop up for me are: Mother Theresa, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gahndi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, The Dali Lama, Steve Jobs, Henry Ford…

    Of the names that came to mind, not a single one of these world-changers attended Ivory Tower University. Of the university that they did attend, it was a minor contributor, if at all, to their world-changing creations.

    Point is: universities don’t focus on creating great creators. In fact they usually do the opposite, which is to stifle the creativity. (That’s why I’m no longer with a university).

    The typical approach that universities take to education is to scare students into conformity, via grades, an endless series of exams, and a pre-digested view of the “facts.”

    Now, for my academic friends who are riled by this statement, don’t worry. I realize that there are some of you who do things differently. Some of you encourage students to develop their own independent thinking and creativity. Some of you teach classes by supporting inquisitiveness. Kudos to you, seriously! At the same time, realize that you are in the tiny minority who actually cares about this stuff, and that the overall momentum of the system is very much in the direction of conformity. That’s what I’m speaking about.

    So it’s time to make it a wrap, by encouraging you to let that creation out

    Creating is a bit like giving birth. It’s a long period of pregnancy, followed by an often painful delivery, and finally, relief!  Many of us stay “pregnant” with those unborn ideas for our whole life… and the result is never healthy.

    If you’ve got something great to create, now is your time. Don’t hold it back any longer. Find a way to move forward on your creating, of whatever kind suits you – and close your ears to the endless naysayers you may encounter along the journey!

    Treat their input as you would treat toxic green slime mold growing on food – get rid of it!

     

     

    Dr. Morgan Giddings

     

    Morgan

     

  • Declaration of Boundary

    Declaration of Boundary

    DECLARATION of BOUNDARY. No more “FREE” ride.

    In the past two years:

    I helped one person get her email list going and get at least 20k worth of new clients, along with building massive momentum forward in her business… for FREE.

    I helped another person clarify his business and immediately double his revenues… along with sorting out a lot of other issues holding him back from building a 500k/yr business… for FREE

    I helped a third person work through personal issues and overcome multiple hurdles in balancing a very challenging day job with building a business… bringing in 10’s of thousands of dollars of clients…for FREE

    and the list goes on (I have more examples, I just don’t want it to become a ridiculously long post)

    Doing this for FREE is disrespectful of myself and my family. It is disrespectful of people who do pay for my help. It is disrespectful to the person receiving the “free” help, because it’s the equivalent of taking without giving, causing a karmic imbalance.

    Each of these people I helped were PAYING other mentors at the time I helped them, and used that as a reason to justify why they wanted to continue getting FREE help and input from me.

    I know that I caused this. Nobody is to blame but myself. I have held poor boundaries on the value of what I do.

    So, this is a public declaration of a new boundary: if you want my help fixing your work, your business, or your life, don’t come to me looking for “FREE.” Nothing is truly “FREE” and you get what you pay for.

    I do damn good work for my clients. I love them and help them deeply. From now on I’ll be focusing all my efforts on those who understand and value that.

    And – if you are someone who likes to approach people and get “free” advice, think about how the world will mirror that back to you in your work or business.

  • Why Private School?

    Sometimes people seem to wonder: if Morgan’s business is going so well, why doesn’t she drive a fancy car or wear fancy clothes?

    One big reason: 3 kids in private school 

    Next question: why private school?

    While I’d love to believe in the idea of public education, it’s current incarnation is anti-creativity and anti-independent thinking.

    By necessity – large class sizes and small budgets – teachers end up giving lots of rote, follow the formula types of work. This teaches kids how to be better calculators, but not how to be more engaged and creative human beings.

    At the end of the day, you get what you pay for, and my kids’ education isn’t something I’m looking for the bargain basement deal on.

  • Parents Freak Out

    Many parents freak out about taking kids for “dangerous” activities like whitewater, mountain biking, and climbing.

    So instead, they keep their kids inside, safely ensconced with butt planted on chair in front of the tv or computer or books. 

    Meanwhile, the kids learn to be afraid. Afraid of adventure and the outdoors. “It’s scary out there!” It might be cold, it might be wet, it might even (*gasp*) cause some scrapes and bruises.

    All the while, the effects of the sedentary lifestyle accumulate, like grains of sand pouring through an hourglass. They pile up, larger and larger, until ultimately the body can’t handle it anymore and it rebels.

    Diabetes, cancer, early heart disease… And more.

    Those are the dangers of Not Doing.

    Given that vastly far more people die from heart disease and cancer than from all outdoor activities (times ten), I’ll choose the so-called risks of the outdoors for my kids, thanks very much.

    And they get to feel the gentle play of the sunshine as they float down beautiful rivers – rather than the fake world of video games that is almost like sensory deprivation in comparison.

    I’m grateful to all you parents who do take your kids outside for adventures! You are doing them a huge favor.

  • The Real Problem With The Economy

    The Real Problem With The Economy

    Over on Fearless Creators, there’s a new blog post: the Real Problem With The Economy. Here’s the link: http://fearlesscreators.com/blog/the-real-problem-with-the-economy

  • Want Happiness and Productivity? Get to that Core! (video)

     

    Isn’t it funny how the more we try to have control — swatting at negative emotions and demands like buzzing flies — the more frustrated we get and the less in control we feel? That’s because when we’re reacting, we’re giving up control. We’ve decided to let an outside force set our agenda for us.

    Now, that doesn’t mean we should stick our fingers in our ears and go through life singing “I can’t hear you” to anything unpleasant that comes along. Control isn’t about tuning out the un-fun stuff or having things go our way. It’s about getting in touch with what we do want. That takes practice, and patience, and relaxed time spent thinking about what you want to be doing and why.

    Turn off your phone, give your “glowing rectangles” a break, and listen for that voice inside that says “Wouldn’t it be awesome if?” The more frequently you listen for it, the louder it gets. Pretty soon, you’ll feel inspired to do something about it. The steps you take from there are your most powerful.

    That’s being proactive.

  • Creativity-sucking education stamping widgets of children* (video)

    Creativity-sucking education stamping widgets of children* (video)

    Why our educational system is stamping out “children as widgets” – a great video with Sir Ken Robinson

    Working with the world’s top scientists and entrepreneurs, I’ve seen a few things. The biggest of those things is the thing of creativity being repressed and even outright absent. This stunts career growth and all sorts of other badness. So, check out the video to learn where it came from and what we need to do about it.

    And if it makes you really angry like it does me – or even if you just find yourself stifled because you feel “widgetized” and unable to make creative leaps and bounds in your life, then take it a step further.

    Learn how to kill the creativity killer. (I know, that’s a double negative. Hey, I’ve got creative license!)

    Incredibly cool thing for you: I’ve reopened registration for Think Creative! Be Productive! for one day (today) only!**

    This is the class that’s helping thought leaders all over the world reclaim their “birthright” of creative leadership. Seriously – if you look at leaders in any field, are they the ones playing “follow the leader?” Um, by definition, no. They’re the ones who are at the leading edge, creating new ways of doing things.

    Wanna be one of those? Or do you have the more modest goal of just taking control of your own life? Then join us in this class, asap.

    See you there! It’s going to be really fun (and eye opening!)

    Morgan

    * Occasionally I get some commenter freaking out about the “dramatic” titles I sometimes use. Well, if you don’t like the title, go read another blog – or better yet, create your own (um, yeah, that requires creativity, hah!). Seriously – with billions of pages on the web to get bored with, why do boring stuff? I mean, really! Don’t do boring stuff. Instead, join us in the class!

    ** Yeah, I know, maybe you’re a bit late hitting this page, and for that, I’m sorry – but you can get on the waiting list if that’s so!

  • Working hard does NOT equal success

    Yesterday I was on Facebook, and a very successful fellow entrepreneur posted something that shocked me. It was on a discussion of feelings of entitlement in society, and how many people have an undeserved “feeling of superiority” to their peers – especially in Gen Y.

    To paraphrase the response:

    I feel superior to my Gen Y counterparts because I work harder than they do. I have worked 100 hour weeks, consistently, and that’s what’s led to my success.

    It took me aback to have this otherwise very smart and successful entrepreneur espousing such a simplistic formula for “success.”

    I’ve seen plenty of entrepreneurs who “work 100 hour weeks” who don’t have anywhere near the kind of success this person has had in her business. I was one of them.  Back when I had my bike shop, I was driving myself into the ground, working 100+ hour weeks between my day job as a faculty member and the “side job” of running that bike shop.

    What happened when I did that?

    I made lots of poor decisions – decisions that cost us 10’s of thousands of dollars.

    I rushed into things, because I always felt “behind” and “hurried.” That made the bad decisions worse.

    I pressured employees and my business partner (who was also a family member). The relationship became strained and she became supremely unhappy with the business. She started self-sabotoging success, by making really bad choices.

    After doing all that, I eventually burned out. I just got sick of that way of being, and resented that bike shop for “doing it to me.” It wasn’t long after the resentment crept in that the business started going downhill – fast.

    That “hard work” wasn’t a recipe for success. It was a recipe for disaster. I still am paying off the loans from that failed bike shop (even though I’ve been very successful with my new business that was founded from the ashes of the bike shop).

    Look – if you just think that “hard work” is all it takes, then I suggest you go out and get a job digging ditches. There will be plenty of hard work for you – as much as you could possibly want.

    I’m not saying that entrepreneurs should never “work hard.”  There are times you’re going to have to do that. There are times in a business when you have to give birth to a new project – a campaign, a product, a book, or whatever. When you’re giving birth to something big, you will have to put in some long hours.

    But the key lies in what you do after you’ve given birth to that big thing. Do you relax and recuperate (like a mother does after giving birth to her baby?) Or do you jump right back in to hard work, thinking that if you don’t do that, then you’re going to fall behind?

    There’s a big difference between episodic “hard work” and chronic “hard work.”

    Episodic hard work – if directed with clarity and good decisions – can yield incredible fruits. (I’ve built a multi-multi-six figure business very quickly with that kind of work).

    Chronic hard work, while it may yield fruit short term, over the long term only yields stress, ill-health, and burnout.

    Do not follow the advice of those who would tell you that to succeed you must work 100 hour weeks (chronically). It’s counter productive.

    My own situation is proof: just contrast the failed bike shop where I regularly worked 100 hour weeks, versus my present business where the 100 hour weeks have only happened sporadically, followed by recovery periods.

    My present business is more fun, more successful, and having a greater impact on the world.

    All because I have a lot more clarity about what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. That clarity doesn’t come from being overworked and overstressed.

    If you want more help – if you feel chronically overwhelmed, stressed, or exhausted – then I’ve got some good stuff coming to help you. I’ll be making a series of brand new videos on über-productivity for you. Just sign up for my newsletter (below) and I’ll let you know when they’re ready.

    ps – if you want to read a related blog post I wrote on this topic for scientists, you can check it out on my morganonscience.com blog. I have some specific pointers there that you should find immediately helpful.

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