What is the SIZE of fight in you?

Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind on this common belief : creativity is something you are born with and others can only envy.

Wrong. Creativity is a skill that everyone can learn.

People understand that to become skilled at tennis or skiing you have to put in hours of practice. The same is true of creativity.


Often, ideas arrive in a flash of illumination, but they need to be refined, analysed and improved exhaustively. Struggle is to be expected and honored. 

To achieve anything worthwhile takes persistence. The creative are persistent.

Ray Bradbury set himself the task of writing one short story every week. Ten years and 520 short stories later, he wrote one strong enough to publish.

Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence of Picasso on modern visual arts, the influence of Stravinsky on music, and the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright on architecture.

She was the first dancer to perform at the White House, and receive the highest civilian award of the US: the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her style, the Graham technique, fundamentally reshaped American dance and is still taught worldwide.

This is what she wrote in 1953 titled "An Athlete of God", here is an extract:

I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God.

Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.
I think the reason dance has held such an ageless magic for the world is that it has been the symbol of the performance of living. Many times I hear the phrase "the dance of life." It is close to me for a very simple and understandable reason. The instrument through which the dance speaks is also the instrument through which life is lived: the human body. It is the instrument by which all the primaries of experience are made manifest. It holds in its memory all matters of life and death and love.

Dancing appears glamorous, easy, delightful. But the path to the paradise of that achievement is not easier than any other. There is fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep. There are times of complete frustration; there are daily small deaths. Then I need all the comfort that practice has stored in my memory and a tenacity of faith. But it must be the kind of faith that Abraham had, wherein he "staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief."

..... And there is grace. I mean the grace resulting from faith: faith in life, in love, in people and in the act of dancing. All this is necessary to any performance in life which is magnetic, powerful, rich in meaning.


.....We have all walked the high wire of circumstance at times. We recognize the gravity pull of the earth as he does. The smile is there because he is practicing living at that instant of danger. He does not choose to fall.

To be creative you have to relentlessly develop and improve yourself and your ideas.

As Mark Twain commented: "It's not the size of the dog in the fight - it's the SIZE OF THE FIGHT IN THE DOG."

Finish strong. Only listen to that which empowers you!

Intelligence is overrated. When people are overwhelmed by life, intelligence has very little to do with coping. It has very little to do with happiness. It has very little to do with general success in life. What mattered more is this life-sustaining force that is rooted in our relationship with the future: HOPE.

It is a gift - don’t surrender it. Hope gives us the power to effect change - designed for anyone to work through their struggles - don’t throw it away. 

Hope is vital because when we LOSE HOPE (we call this “despair”) in the future, we LOSE JOY (we call this “grief” or “sorrow”) in the PRESENT because we have no firm foundation for confidence in the FUTURE. In short, the soothing balm of HOPE (allows us to) see heaven through the thickest clouds.

It has been said that the only things worse than insanity are despair and hopelessness. Hopelessness is dangerous because it leads to feelings of powerlessness. Powerlessness is dangerous because the inability to effect change is a desperate feeling and produces resignation.

Hope is not an emotion. Hope is not optimism. Optimism is an attitude. You think your future will be better than today. Hope without critical thinking is naïveté.

Blindly believing that everything will work out just fine produces resignation, for we have no motive to apply ourselves toward making things better.

Hope is belief plus action. It is both the belief in a better future and the action to make it happen. It's a way of thinking that has a huge influence in your behavior and in how you respond to various situations. Hope is a combination of your head and heart.

Hopeful people share four core beliefs:
- The future will be better than the present;
- I have the power to make it so;
- There are many paths to my goals;
- None of them is free of obstacles.

https://youtu.be/-MH2HNA4de4

How we think about the future—how we hope—determines how well we live our lives. 
Please build up your hope. Then with hope to spare, help others build a future that is better than the present. Much better.

Are you going to finish strong?

From infancy you have known this tool.....

When the Vietnam War drew to a close in 1973, 566 military prisoners of war were returned from captivity in North Vietnam. Over 30 years later the medical and psychological tests of approximately 300 of these repatriated prisoners showed FEW medical, social, and psychological problems. 

How can this be? The answers are varied and complex, but one thing seems clear. The Vietnam POWs had no say about many parts of their lives but had a system that worked, a system for human connection based on control. They had control over this one thing, and that was their humor perspective e.g. joking and making others laugh.

This emotional regulation strategy is a key ingredient in resiliency - ability to see humor in a crisis - which doesn’t deny the awfulness of the negative experience. It helps you to construe it as less threatening; so that you can think clearly what to do about them.

Hilarity brings clarity. 

These POWs were certainly victimized by their captors, but they never saw themselves as victims, no matter what was done to them. They weren’t victims because they took control of the few things they could control. 

Humor, even when dealing with negative situations, up-regulates by introducing positive emotions to the situation as well as a broadening of attention to also include more positive aspects of one’s environment, in addition to the stressful event.

There is a whole industry out there ready to turn you into a victim by having you dwell on the traumas in your life. Sometimes it is easier to be a victim and sympathy can feel sweet. In reality, you have considerable capacity for strength, although you might not be wholly aware of it.

A cheerful disposition has long been considered good medicine as well. Research backs up this old adage.  

“…Researchers at the University of Maryland … have shown for the first time that laughter is linked to healthy function of blood vessels. Laughter appears to cause the tissue that forms the inner lining of blood vessels, the endothelium, to dilate or expand in order to increase blood flow.” (Science Daily, 2011) Research is increasing our awareness on the positive effects of laughter, while also shedding light on the negative effects of increased stress hormones.

“Laughter reduces the level of stress hormones like cortisol, epinephrine (adrenaline), dopamine and growth hormone. It also increases the level of health-enhancing hormones like endorphins, and neurotransmitters. Laughter increases the number of antibody-producing cells and enhances the effectiveness of T cells. All this means a stronger immune system, as well as fewer physical effects of stress.” (Scott, 2011)

Findings from these studies have important implications for health practitioners working in hospice settings, long-term care facilities, nursing homes, and hospitals.

Humor has been described in this way: “they turn nothing into something and something into nothing.” It is hard to feel like a victim when you are laughing.

Our life has also become so mechanized and electronified that one needs some kind of an elixir to make it bearable at all. And what is this elixir if not humor? It helps to reduce the expression and repercussions associated with negative emotions.

Resilient people don’t walk between the raindrops; we do have scars to show for our experience - but keep functioning anyway. 

A good sense of humor adds a degree of richness and fullness to one’s life, including enhanced enjoyment of positive life experiences, greater positive emotions, a more positive view of self, and greater psychological well-being and quality of life.

Find out what makes you laugh and include it in your daily routine. 

Happily ever laughter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNoS2BU6bbQ