Walt Disney — Dreams

Robert Louis Stevenson — Becoming

Harley King — Seeds of Hope

We live in difficult and challenging times.  Some have begun to despair that the world is coming to a violent end. I remember another moment in the late 1960's when I felt the world would end. What I have learned over the years is that the world continues.  There are always moments of hope to be found. We must choose to plant seeds of hope.

I believe that everything we do is a choice we make. We have little control over what happens to us. We have little control over the hostile world in which we live. The only thing we control is our response to what is happening. So my choice is to plant seeds of hope with my words and deeds. I choose to celebrate the spirit of love.

We also need to understand that even though we plant seeds of hope, we will not eliminate the hatred and hostility in the world.  So do not give into the false hope of changing the world overnight.  

If we choose to plant to seeds of hope, we will touch the lives of a few people. Every farmer knows, there are different types of soil and not all of it is fertile. I know that sometimes the seeds that I plant fall on stoney ground and the seeds fail to take root. I have learned that I can’t give hope to people if they are not ready to receive it. Sometimes it may take years for that seed to grow. And sometimes the seed is eaten by birds and squirrels. Have faith that some of the seeds you plant will grow and bloom.

Katharine Graham — Love What You Do

Do you love what you do? Do you love to paint? Do you love to write? Do you love to act? Do you love to draw? What is your passion? If you do not enjoy writing or singing or painting, then maybe it is time to get out of the creative business and find something you love to do. The creative world is difficult and if you don't have fun being creative, you will feel like you have been hit by truck.

What we as creative leaders do is very important. We touch people's lives and help them feel better about themselves. We solve problems and show the world a better way. We bring beauty and new ideas into the world. We help people escape their mundane worlds for a short time. We inspire people to be better than they are. We give hope where there is none. We help people visit new worlds and experience new places.

Celebrate the creative work that you do. Be proud of the creative work that you create. Appreciate your accomplishments and achievements even when others don't recognize your talent. Be happy with who you are.

Bernie Siegel — Hope

As a young writer, hope is one of the few things that kept me going.  I would read a story about someone who was 50 or 60 or 7o and he had just published his first novel.  After years of toiling in the salt mines of writing, he found success.  These stories inspired me to keep writing.  I had hope that one day I would be discovered and become successful.  Even today I have that sense of hope, that belief that one day I will be proved right.  Yes, I am a writer.

When we lose hope, we give up on life.  We quit.  Some days all we have is hope.  As the old saying goes: every dark cloud as a silver lining.  We just have to find it — to look at the world with new eyes.  To see the butterfly in the midst of chaos.  No matter how dark the night, there is always a sunrise.  Everyone faces challenges and difficulties.  The sad thing for me is people who see no way out of a problem but to take their own lives.  Never give up hope for a better tomorrow.

As creative thinkers, we need hope.  We need to believe in ourselves, our ideas, our art.  Have faith that you have been given a gift.  Have faith in your dreams.  Have faith that the sun will rise again.

General Colin Powell

Some people look for the easy way, the next get rich scheme and the short-cuts to the top. I had a brother-in-law like that. He was always looking for the business opportunity that would make him rich. He fantasized about retiring to a beach in Cabo, Mexico. Yet, he was never willing to invest the time and hard work it takes to become successful.  He was always moving onto the next great idea that would make him rich. He died with his dream unfulfilled. Even on his death bed, he was still scheming how to make his first million.

Practicing any of the arts takes patience, hard work and persistence. Nothing happens overnight. Many people quit too soon. They become frustrated because what they produce does not match what is in their imagination. And this quitting begins early in life. I recently saw a four-year old girl who was working on a painting of the ocean become frustrated because the painting did not match what was in her mind. She burst into tears. Has this happened to you? Do you become so frustrated that you quit? Do you give up on your work?

If you want something bad enough, you have to prepare, work hard, and learn from your failures. As artists and writers we understand this because we sometimes labor for years or even a lifetime with little or no success. My words are simple: keep writing, keep painting, keep living.

Kahlil Gibran

Hope is an essential gift we have been given as human beings. Hope is the capacity for believing that tomorrow will be better. Without hope, we are wandering through a dark, desolate world. We are at the mercy of our fears and doubts. Hope allows us to see beyond the current trouble we are experiencing. In even our worst moments, we need to remember that life will get better. There is always light at the end of the tunnel, even when we can't see it.

As artists, writers and creative leaders, we need to believe that the next painting or the next poem will be our best. Hope keeps us writing, painting and acting in the face of self-doubt and failure. If we were to quit now, we would never know what was around the next corner or what opportunities lay ahead.

As creative leaders need hope because we live in a very negative, sometimes hostile world, that often does not understand or appreciate our creative work. I have been writing seriously for almost forty years and have yet to receive acceptance and recognition for the work I have produced. Another person might have quit many years ago, but I keep plugging away.

Do you have faith in your creative ideas? Your poems? Your stories? Your paintings? Your ability to become another person on stage? Do you have dark days when you want to quit and live a normal life? Hope keeps us going even when everything and everybody around us are telling us to give up — that we have no talent, no gift.

What keeps you going during those darkest of hours? Why do you believe in your ideas? Where does your hope come from? Don't give up. Keep dreaming. Keep hoping. Keep believing. In every winter you will find the flowers of spring.

Joye Moon

How do you begin your day? With a cup of coffee? A cold beer? With steak and eggs? Or a doughnut? Do you drag yourself out of bed wishing you could spend the day sleeping? Are you wide awake and full of energy?  Do you hit the snooze button again and again trying to steal a few more minutes of sleep? Do you sing in the shower and dance about the room?

While my wife and I are both early risers, we approach our mornings differently. She loves sound and light.  She turns on the TV so noise fills room.  She turns on the lights around the house chasing away the darkness.  I, on the other hand, prefer silence so I can give free rein to my thoughts.  Mornings are my creative time.  Ideas seem to spring out of nowhere.  I don't want to talk. I don't want any external noise disrupting my thoughts.  My thoughts are enough noise. We both are enthusiastic about the day, but approach it differently.

Some people get up in the morning and say: "Good morning, Lord. It is great to be alive!" They are full of energy and enthusiasm.  Other people get up and say: "O Lord, it's morning again." They start the morning in reverse and keep going backwards. Which person are you? Someone who appreciates each day she has been given? Or someone who finds no joy in living and finds fault with the world? 

How you begin your day can have a positive or negative impact on your creative work. Do you begin your day with meditation? Or prayer? Do you take a walk? Or lift weights? Do you eat a healthy breakfast or do you skip the most important meal of the day? 

Be thankful for every day you wake up. The alternative to waking up is being six feet under. Celebrate the day and give thanks for all you have been given. Every day is an enchanted gift — an opportunity to begin again.  Greet the morning with enthusiasm and hope.

Helen Keller

During the first 35 years of my life I was more of a pessimist than an optimist.  I saw the glass as half empty, not half full.  I saw problems instead of opportunities.  I've had to learn the power of optimism and the need to see the glass as half full.  I had to learn how to discover the silver lining in the dark cloud.  

Even now as the second 35 years of my life draws to a close, I still struggle some days to see the glass as half full.  Often my first reaction is that something can not be done.  I have learned that I need to believe in myself before I can accomplish anything.  I need to find hope in a negative world.

Being a pessimist is much easier than being an optimist.  In almost any situation, it is easier to find the reasons something can not be done than to find the reasons that it can.  It is easier to be a negative person than a positive one.  

Pessimists believe that they are the realists and that optimists have their heads in the clouds.  The truth is that it is much harder to believe something can be achieved than it is to find fault with an idea.  It is much harder to be an optimist.  And research shows that optimists usually achieve more than pessimists.

As creative leaders, we need to have faith that what we create has value.  We need to believe in our ability to create something that can benefit others.  We need to have the faith to keep working when there appears to be no light at the end of the tunnel.  

Is your glass half full or half empty?

"Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement.  

Nothing can be done without hope and confidence."

— Helen Keller

Recommended Reading:  

Learned Optimism: How To Change Your Mind and Your Life 

by Martin E.P. Seligman

Harley King

I still remember the very first standing ovation that I received 26 years ago.  I had spent three hours speaking to a group of 250 managers.  I was surprised and elated.  I had connected with my audience and moved them to stand and applaud.  As a professional speaker, I have since received numerous standing ovations.  Each one was a powerful form of recognition and appreciation for a job well done.

We all need standing ovations.  We need the people in our lives to recognize and appreciate what we have done.  We need people to say thank you.  You have touched my life.  But we also need to give standing ovations to the people in our lives — to say thank you to a spouse, a child and a friend.  We need to develop an attitude of gratitude.

Most of us are not hermits, living alone, isolated from friends and family.  We need the help of others — including people we have never met — from the person who assembled your cell phone to the farmer who provided the food on your table.  Think how barren your life would be if there were not other people to fill it with laughter and hope.

Who in your life needs a standing ovation today?  Reach out and touch their lives.  Say thank you.  Tell them how much they mean to you.

 

Harley King

One of the easiest things to be in this world is a pessimist.  It is much easier to be negative and discouraging than it is to be positive and enthusiastic.  It is much easier to find fault than it is to find the good.  Pessimists are the enemies of optimism.  They think they are being realistic, but their negative view of the world is no more realistic than the optimist.

We must learn to say goodbye to the pessimists in our lives.  Their negativity is harmful to our mental and emotional health.  Their negativity is destructive to our creative impulse.  No matter how painful it may be, we must let them go.

Many of us become trapped by the chains of our own fears because we don't want to make a mistake — we want what we create to be perfect.  The truth is perfection does not exist. Even nature is not perfect.  We can find plenty of mistakes in nature.  

We must learn to accept and live with imperfection.  We  must not let the chains of our fears destroy us.  Despite our fears, we must keep creating — we must keep growing and developing.  We must believe in ourselves and our talents.

Harley King

Are you bored with your life?  Do you wish you could become someone other than who you are?  A 2007 survey of high school students found that two-thirds admitted to being bored in class every day.  Even creative people, unfortunately, allow themselves to be bored.

Many people feel that their lives are boring.  My hope is that your life can be like a bowl of chili — hot, spicy and full of flavor.  I believe boredom is a state of mind that can be overcome by looking at life new ways.  The fact that you are reading this means that you are still above ground and have not been buried.  The world we live in is very exciting and full of hope if we spend a few minutes every day celebrating life.

For creative leaders like you and me, creativity is a crucial antidote for our survival.  Find joy in your creative energy and your creations.  Creativity overcomes the dull, boring and uninteresting.

Every year people in the northern climates grow tired of the cold.  Cabin fever sets in and our rational minds go on vacation.  Hiding indoors during the winter months can be very boring.  We miss moving about in the outdoors.  We keep looking for something to divert our attention from the cold and snow.  

Have you ever been chilled to the bone and the warmth of a bowl of soup or cup of hot chocolate picked you up and made your whole spirit feel better?  The temperature last night where I live dropped to a minus eight degrees so I thought it was only appropriate to make chili today.  Hot and spicy chili to warm up the body and the spirit.

May your life be like a bowl of chili — 

hot, spicy and full of flavor.

Harley King

Have you ever felt pulled in opposite directions and thought you were going to break?  At one time or another most of us have probably felt that way.  As creative leaders, living the lives we lead in today's world can be very stressful and challenging.  We have multiple priorities vying for our attention and time.  

The demands of a job can be stressful in and of themselves.  We have multiple people pulling and pushing us.  We have deadlines that we have to meet.  Quotas that we have to deliver. Goals we have to achieve.

On top of work, the home life can add additional stress.  We have children to raise, chores to do and spouses who require our time.  We have friends who call and text and want to have coffee so they can chat about the stress in their lives.

Some days it is amazing that we have anytime for ourselves.  Some days we can't find time to do any of our creative work like writing or painting.  When I go too long without writing, I feel out of sorts.  A happy, successful life depends on taking care of oneself — of finding a release for our creative energies.  Too often, we are so busy meeting the needs and demands of others that we forget about our needs and expectations.

Negative people also creative stress in our lives.  They put us down.  They tell us we will never be successful.  They are always finding something to criticize.  They suggest we give up on our dreams because they have given up on theirs.  They are very destructive to our spirits.

Five Ways to Care for Yourself

1.  Discover what restores your spirit.  For example: 

• A walk in the woods
• Exercise
• Meditation
• Prayer
• Reading
• Writing
• Singing
• Drawing/Painting
• Massage

2.  Build time for yourself into your calendar even if it is five minutes a day.

3.  Learn to say "no" to the requests of others if you don't have the time.
4.  Avoid negative people who put you down and make you feel bad about yourself.
5.  Associate with positive people who are supportive and caring.

Harley King

Sometimes we become so lost in the rain of pain and suffering that we fail to see the rainbow of greatness within our souls.  A perfect world does not exist despite how much our hearts wish that it did.  Humans often create their own pain and suffering.  We remember the slights and hurts years after they occur.  We repeat the same bad decisions expecting different results.  Human pain and suffering is a part of the natural order of physical world within which we live.  

Violence and disruption are also a part of the planet.  The civilized world often pretends that the physical world does not exist.  We hide within our buildings safe from the elements.  And we are shocked and surprised when a volcano erupts spilling lava over the land or an earthquake opens up and swallows people and buildings.  Thousands die every years as a result of natural disasters creating more pain and suffering.

Yet within each of us is something greater than the pain and suffering we experience.  If we allow it, the rain of pain and suffering can nourish and water these seeds of greatness.  The pain and suffering can help us grow emotionally and spiritually.  If we learn to harness the pain and suffering, we will be able to transform it into creative works of art.  We can find that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

How To Nourish the Seeds of Greatness

1. Choose to let go of the slights and pain that others have caused you.
2. Choose to forgive those who have harmed you.
3. Believe that you have been give artistic talents to share with the world.
4. Trust that you can transform the pain into creative works.
5. Believe that you are destined for greatness.

Harley King

Rabindranath Tagore

"Faith is the bird that feels the light 
and sings when the dawn is still dark."

— Rabindranath Tagore

Bengali Poet, Novelist, Musician, Painter, Playwright

1861 - 1941

Commentary

Do you believe in your artistic talent?  Do you have faith in your creativity?  Do you let your creative light shine or do you hide it under a bushel basket and refuse to share it with the world?  

Creative leaders need to have the faith that they are on the right path.  Even in those darkest hours before the dawn, you need to understand the sun will rise again — that your creative work is important.  

Don't give up on yourself.  Don't give up on the work you do.  You are unique and special.  No one else can create the paintings, the poems or the novels that you can create.  If you don't use your creative gift to produce art, the world will have lost much.  So pick up your pen and write.  Pick up your brush and paint.  Pick up your guitar and sing.

Biography
Tagore was the youngest of thirteen surviving children born to Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi.  The original family name was Banerjee but was eventually anglicised to Tagore.  His paternal grandfather visited Queen Victoria and other English royalty.  Tagore 

Tagore was raised mostly by servants because his father traveled a lot and his mother died when he was young.  He was raised mostly by servants.  His home was the social center for the arts including music, theater and literature.  His oldest brother was a poet and a philosopher.  Another brother was a composer, musician and a playwright.  His sister was a novelist.  Tagore shunned schools and formal education preferring to be tutored and to read books.  His father sent him to England to study law but he did not like it and instead studied Shakespeare.  He married Mrinalini Devi in 1883 and had five children.

Known mostly for his poetry, Tagore also wrote novels, essays, short stories and thousands of songs.  He composed over 2,000 songs.  He wrote 8 novels and 4 novellas.  He also took up painting at age 60 and had several exhibitions of his work.

In 1913, Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literature.  In 1915 the British Crown granted him knighthood which he renounced in 1919 after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

Poetry
Here is a poem by Tagore:

My Song

by Rabindranath Tagore

This song of mine will wind its music around you,

my child, like the fond arms of love.

The song of mine will touch your forehead

like a kiss of blessing.

When you are alone it will sit by your side and

whisper in your ear, when you are in the crowd

it will fence you about with aloofness.

My song will be like a pair of wings to your dreams,

it will transport your heart to the verge of the unknown.

It will be like the faithful star overhead

when dark night is over your road.

My song will sit in the pupils of your eyes,

and will carry your sight into the heart of things.

And when my voice is silenced in death,

my song will speak in your living heart.

Audrey Hepburn

"I love people who make me laugh.  I honestly think it's the thing I like most, to laugh.  It cures a multitude of ills.  It is probably the most important thing in a person."

— Audrey Hepburn
British Actress
1929 - 1993

Commentary

I am by nature a very serious person.  Laughter does not come easy for me.  Yet, I agree whole-heartedly with Audrey Hepburn — laughter cures a multitude of ills.  My wife, on the other hand, is the family comedian and is always making people laugh.  She is the life of the party.  She is always telling me to smile more and I keep telling her to be more serious.  Yet it is probably our ability and willingness to laugh together that has helped our marriage to last more than forty years.

One of our daughters is like my wife.  She does silly things to make people laugh and she is always trying to make me laugh.  She gets excited when she discovers something that make me laugh.  She finds joy in living.  

What I have discovered is that I have a unique sense of humor.  Much of what others find funny I do not laugh at.  I don't laugh at slapstick comedy and I find most sitcoms boring. Yet, someone can say something that is not meant to be funny and I will laugh.  I often find satire to be very funny.

I have slowly learned to incorporate humor into my workshops and seminars, but I don't and can't tell jokes.  I don't have it in me.  Yet, I have found that I can play off the humor that is within every group.  I listen to what others say and spontaneously create short responses that continue and extend the humorous point that someone made.

I believe we have to be able to laugh at life.  Even the best laid plans of mice and men will and often do go astray.  The creative leader has to learn to laugh when things go wrong.  We have to learn not to take ourselves too seriously because in the end it doesn't matter when we are six feet under.  Humor is the key to survival in this difficult and challenging world in which we live.

What makes you laugh?  Do you laugh often?  Do you have those deep belly laughs where everything shakes and tears fill your eyes?  Laughter helps us to relax and unwind and frees up the creative juices.  Most of us serious folks need to learn to laugh more and enjoy ourselves.

Biography
Audrey Kathleen Ruston was the daughter of Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston, a British subject, and Baroness Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch aristocrat.  Although she was born in Belgium, Audrey Hepburn held British citizenship through her father.  Hepburn spoke five languages: English, Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian.  Her parents divorced when she was a young girl.

The eleven-year-old Hepburn was living in the Netherlands when Germany invaded in 1940.  During the war, she suffered from malnutrition, developed anemia, respiratory problems and edema.  She secretly danced for groups of people to raise money for the Dutch resistance.  She occasionally  was a courier for the resistance, delivering messages and packages.

During the Dutch famine in the winter of 1944, Hepburn and her family resorted to making flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuits.  She passed the time by drawing.  After the war ended, Hepburn, who had studied ballet since she was five, took ballet lessons for three years from a leading figure in Dutch ballet.  

Hepburn moved to London to work as a chorus girl.  She performed in musical theater revues in 1948, 1949 and 1950.  In 1951, she acted in several British films.  Her big break came when she was selected to play Gigi in the Broadway play in November of 1951 which ran for 219 performances and earned her a Theatre World Award.

In 1953, William Wyler cast Hepburn in the starring role of Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck.  The film garnered her critical and commercial success including Academy Award for Best Actress.  She was signed to a seven picture contract with Paramount.  She starred opposite several of Hollywood's best actors including, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden, Henry Fonda, Fred Astaire, Cary Grant and Gary Cooper.

Video
Here is Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in the movie Sabrina.

C. S. Lewis

"Faith is the art of holding on to things in spite of your changing moods and circumstances."

— C. S. Lewis

Irish Writer & Novelist

1898 - 1963

Commentary

Creative leaders need a lot of faith because they live in a very negative, sometimes hostile world, that often does not understand or appreciate their work.  I have been writing seriously for almost forty years and have yet to receive acceptance and recognition for the work I have produced.  Another person might have quit many years ago, but I keep plugging away.

Do you have faith in your creative ideas?  Your poems?  Your stories?  Your paintings?  Your ability to become another person on stage?  Do you have dark days when you want to quit and live a normal life?  Faith keeps us going even everything and everybody around us are telling us to give up — that we have no talent, no gift.

Where does your faith come from?  What keeps you going during those darkest of hours?  Why do you believe in your ideas?  

Creative Practice

This week think about what faith means to your artistic endeavors.  Why is faith in yourself and your creative work important?  Why must you believe in yourself?  Write for ten minutes on the importance of faith.  Or paint a picture of what faith means to you.

Biography

Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland to Albert James Lewis and Florence Augusta Hamilton Lewis.  When he was four, his dog, Jacksie, was killed and he began calling himself Jacksie and would not answer to any other name.  He was known as Jack to his family and friends the rest of his life.

Jack loved animals as a child and read the Beatrix Potter's stories.  He wrote and illustrated his own animal stories as a child.  His mother died from cancer when he was ten.  Jack developed a love of Norse, Greek and Irish mythology.  At the age of 18 he was awarded a scholarship to University College, Oxford and a year later dropped out to join the British Army during World War I.  He resumed his studies when the war was over.

Lewis became an atheist at 15 and it took many years to restore his faith in God.  He converted in Christianity at 33.  

C. S. Lewis was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction.  His close friends included J. R. R. Tolkien.  His Chronicles of Narnia (seven fantasy novels for children) is a classic of children's literature.  The series has sold over 100 million copies and has been translated into 41 languages.

Napoleon Hill

"The starting point of all achievement is desire.  Keep this constantly in mind.  Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat."

— Napoleon Hill

American Author

1883 - 1970

The difference between the winners and losers is in the amount of desire they have.  Do you have the desire to do what it takes to become successful or do you give up too quickly?  Many people have dreams, hopes and even goals, but few have an abundance of desire.  For only if you have desire are you willing to make the sacrifices needed to be successful.

Edith Wharton

"True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision."

— Edith Wharton

American Novelist

1862 - 1937

What is your vision for your art?  Your writing?  Do you even have a vision?  Or do you have no idea of what you want to achieve?  When I talk about vision, I am also talking about purpose.  What is your purpose for being on this earth?  What is the reason you exist?  Why are you here?  Are you going to leave this world a better place when you pass beyond the veil?

My vision for my life is very simple:  I choose to plant seeds of hope in the hearts of others.