Ken Robinson believes that creativity should be valued just as much as reading is. I must say that I agree with him wholeheartedly.

Let’s define creativity

First, we need to be on the same page. To me, creativity is the ability to come up with an original idea that adds value to some aspect of life. It usually presents itself as a combination of two previously separate ideas into a new useful form. An example of this would be bringing together my understanding of websites, and my wish to develop both myself and others. What I’ve created is something new that is useful.

So you see, anyone can be creative. Just write down a list of things you like to do and you’re good at. Then start combining them. I once saw a movie where the actress hosted a jogging/photography class. Hell, I wanna go try that right now.

The problem with schools

I believe schools disvalue creativity in children. Instructors take this authoritative approach to teaching. They have the answers, they provide the questions, the students should just learn what is taught.

Children become afraid to be wrong, and this in turn creates adults who are afraid to be wrong. The problem is this line of reasoning is completely ass backwards. Take it from your own experiences. Haven’t the lessons that have stuck with you the most clearly been from mistakes you made rather than answers you got right?

Failure is not creativity

Now I’m not saying failure is creativity. However, Ken Robinson pointed out that you can’t be creative if you’re not prepared to be wrong. And the truth is you can’t.

People aren’t born with innate knowledge in whatever field they’re in. They learn it, and a lot of times it’s by trial and error. Those people who are truly creative fail. They fail a bunch. What separates them from the pack is their mindset.

The creative mindset

The creative mindset does not take a single failure as an ultimate failure. The creative mindset learns from the failure and adjusts appropriately. After you adjust, you may still fail. Just keep pushing hard and eventually you’ll come up with a creative solution.

Hope this was helpful. If not, please comment and tell me so.

-DM

Following Glen’s lead, I will be posting articles a little more slowly from now on. It has been nice seeing you guys check in on my posts. Keep it up. But guess what? You don’t have to check back so often. Just click Grab our RSS feed button in the upper right hand corner, and you won’t even have to check back.

Signal not noise

In case you haven’t researched into making radios (I have), the difference between signal and noise is the fact that signal has purpose, is sharing a message, and is valuable. On the other hand, noise has no purpose, shares no message, and is not valuable. In fact, the only thing noise is good at doing is being a back drop to signal.

How does this apply to the field of personal development and blogging in general? Extending my analogy, noise is the typical riff-raff you will find on the web. Crappy articles are a dime a dozen. They don’t hit home, they don’t give a strong message, and they’re mostly not valuable. However, every once in a while you stumble upon an article that really changes your perspective of something. It reveals something to you which you hadn’t known before. Writing articles to fill a personal quota won’t generate those articles.

My goal

My goal is not to create a popular website. Sometimes I get caught up in trying to increase the popularity of my website, but if I keep myself focused I won’t. Trying to build a popular website is the exact opposite way things should be done. You can’t set out to make something popular. It doesn’t work that way.

My goal is to create something valuable. Something that is truly unique and sets itself apart from the background noise. The scary part is I have no idea how I will do that. It feels like there is a mountain ahead of me that I’ve got to climb, but I’ll be damned if I don’t do it.

My plan

I will write every other day as I had planned, but I will not publish always. I’m going to write more detailed articles about things that interest me in personal development, and will hopefully interest you. Take this article for instance. The lesson you should learn is that in everything you do, create something valuable. Nothing else matters. However, keep in mind that the definition of valuable is very lax. What is valuable to me is not valuable to the next person. Keep that in mind.

Enjoy reading!

-DM

I want to focus on paragon as an ideal instance. I tend to think people limit themselves in what they do because they think of the paragon of a situation. That is to say, they think of the ideal instance of a situation. I’ll use a friend of mine as an example. We used to go out when we were both single, and try to talk to girls. His goal for the night would be to go home with someone, and my goal for the night was to talk to girls. Today, I’m married and he’s still single.

A paragon is a curse

I believe a paragon can become a curse. If you go out with specific expectations and you don’t meet those expectations, you’ll consider the night a failure. This doesn’t only apply to chatting up girls, but really to almost any aspect of life.

You can rehearse all you like for an interview or show, but when the spotlight comes on, the rules can change in an instance. In high school, I was in the musical Grease.  I played the character Doody who had a guitar solo during one of the interludes. If I’m being honest with you, I might as well tell you I sucked. I rehearsed that song hundreds of times, but the whole game changed when the spotlight came on me. In fact, I stopped trying to play the guitar, and forgot the words one of the nights.

So what did I do? I rolled with it. Thankfully so did the other people in the cast. The guys playing Sonny, Danny, and Kenicky (sp?) decided they’d have fun with it too. They intentionally messed up the dance, and fooled around on stage and it was perfect. I could have gotten upset with them stealing my spotlight, but that wouldn’t have made me sing any better. I guess I learned this lesson long ago.

Loosen up

You can’t plan everything, and the unexpected will usually rear its ugly head more often than not. So why fight it? Enjoy what you’re doing and go with the flow most of the time. I don’t mean to sound like a hippie, but seriously, you’ll enjoy yourself a lot more.

Clear your mind before you enter a room. Wing it.

Plan

If you have problems with high expectations and low yield, then let’s plan to loosen up. Instead of going into social, academic, or any other sphere of humanity with expectations of the outcome, go in with an open mind and a blank canvas. You may be missing opportunities by having your preconceived notions.

-DM

So goals are pretty important aren’t they? I tend to think so at least. They help us make sense of what we’re trying to do with this life. I unfortunately have not been very good at keeping with my goals lately. I consider it a personal failure.

The most recent example is actually this website. It has been a medicine blog for about 2 years now, and before personal development, my plan was to write a fictional story about a pharmacist who is having a normal day, then is thrown into the worlds of spies and action. My plan was to produce an article every 3 days.

I had already written 7 or so articles when I started and had set them up to automatically come up. The problem is I never kept with it after I set up the articles. I left the story on autopilot, and eventually became disinterested in the story all together.

My challenge to you

You’ve come to a personal development website to develop yourself. I’m here to provide you with the information you’re seeking to develop yourself. Therefore, I feel a bit accountable for your successes or failures, so I’m going to assume the role of a coach.

My challenge to you is to set one goal. It can be almost anything, but I want you to set a goal. If I were you, I’d set some goal that you consider a self improvement. I’m not even going to try to tell you what your goal should be, that’s personal. For some, growing a mustache could be their goal. If they consider it a self improvement that is. For others, the challenge could be to shave their mustache away everyday. This should be entirely personalized to you, and should be a self improvement.

What kind of goals are you talking about?

I could say that one goal I have is to get out of bed everyday, but it’s a crappy idea. For me it has never been an issue. I believe I’ve never spent an entire day in bed. My point with this is I would never consider getting out of bed a goal. Getting out of bed is a habit of mine and is also a habit most other people. Now, I recognize there are people who have struggled with getting out of bed every day of their life. If you’re one of those people, then getting out of bed could be a goal for you.

I know that was an exhaustive metaphor, but my point is your goal should be something that is not a habit of yours. It should be something that improves some aspect of your life that you are not already doing. There are an infinite number of possibilities, but general themes for self improvement are as follows:

• Improves your health
• Improves your mind
• Improves your spirit
• Improves your relationships

Why set goals?

Like I said, I think goals are generally a good thing. Goals give us direction for our actions, and allow us to achieve things we would otherwise not do. I’ve found from my own experience that if I don’t develop some plan for my day, I will actually do nothing. I might read random articles or look at work without actually doing it, but at the end of the day I couldn’t tell you what I did.

Goals however make you accountable to yourself. They give you a skeleton for your day, and generally help you remember you have things to do.

Enforcing your goal

I find that if I don’t write down what I’m meant to do I forget. I’m not sure if it’s because I have a poor short-term memory, or a by product of being a guy. It’s probably a mixture, but that’s still no excuse for the number of things I forget. So lately, I’ve been writing down a list of what I’ve meant for myself to do. This may be a strategy that helps you. Please let me know if it does.

Write down your goal, and put it somewhere that you will see several times throughout the day. You shouldn’t hide it, and you shouldn’t be embarrassed by it. If you are, then use code words!

My challenge

I wouldn’t be a very good personal developer if I didn’t hold myself accountable to a goal either. So even if no one else reads this blog but my wife, my goal is to write at least 1 article every 2 days. This one has taken me about 30 minutes of dedicated time, and I think it is a pretty decent start. Let me know what you think.

If you end up following my blog, please keep me on track. I’ll get emails if you guys comment, and I think social reinforcement would be helpful. Oh yeah, thanks for reading my first post!

DM