Steve Jobs makes creativity sound like an easy process. You just connect things you see and then you can feel guilty because you didn’t really do anything. Bah. Being creative requires guts, hard work and a willingness to fail, learn and try again and again until you get it right. Thomas Edison learned repeatedly how not to make a lightbulb. Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times in his career compared to his 714 career home runs.

Yes, creatives have a knack for seeing from a different point of view. They can take experiences and thoughts and craft them in new ways, create new ideas, new processes and new things. But it doesn’t happen without work, experimentation, and risk.

What risks are you taking today?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

We hear this advice a lot, ‘Do your best’, they say. But how do you go about it? Start by using yesterday as your baseline. What did you accomplish?  Then identify one item you could improve upon, do better, faster, better. As you are working, throughout the day, let your passion seep into your work and do each task as if you intend to create a masterpiece.

Pretend you live a world-class life. You are the master chef when you prepare your morning coffee.  As the Prima Ballerina, you dance, floating gracefully into the shower, and while you brush your teeth. Coco selects your outfit and accessories. At work, your inner Einstein helps you complete your spreadsheet, while Hemmingway composes your emails, and Dale Carnegie conducts your meetings.

Jillian leads you through a grueling workout, Danica Patrick drives you home on congested highways, and Julia Childs prepares your dinner. Vow to give up using excuses for why you can’t. Get out of your way and start. Keep your promises to others, without fail. But realize it’s just as important to keep the promises you make to yourself.  Get a good night’s sleep, dream beautiful dreams, then do it again.

Will your today be better than yesterday?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

I have favorite authors, cherished books and poems committed to memory.  Their words and the stories they create enrich my life, but I don’t want to write in their style. The mold that shaped them is not the one which created me. Forcing myself to follow in their footsteps is the fastest way to kill creativity. So, I don’t even try.

Those writers, authors, creators, and dreamers inspire bravery. Daring to pursue your own path means you walk alone. It pushes you to the edge of your comfort zone and forces you to jump. Life doesn’t hand you a parachute, bear repellent, or sunscreen as you head into the unknown. Friends and family offer sage advice, saying you don’t know what’s out there. They beg you to return to safety.

As a creative, it’s like asking you to stop breathing. The world needs your ideas. Stories, remarkable paintings, new devices, beautiful music are the products of those searching for great achievement.

What achievement will you give the world?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

I never fit in at school. Child me didn’t understand, I thought I would gain knowledge. Adult me realized schools are institutions to teach children one lesson.  They imprinted our minds, hard-wiring our psyche with the need to conform, to act like everyone else, to aspire to be average. When you finish high school, the path leads to college and your first job. Every step on the trail reinforces the advantages of conformity and sameness while nurturing a perception of the risk involved in being different.

Peer pressure, dress codes, formal reviews, and dollars in your bank account remind you, we are being judged. Somewhere, someone doesn’t approve of who I am, what I wear, what I do, and scoffs at how much money I don’t have. I would hate for them to lose their job, so I stopped following the rush to mediocrity. The opportunity cost of copying trends and denying my unique style became massive.

Being yourself is difficult. Misunderstood, mocked and treated as an outcast, is the norm for the nonconformist. They attack because they don’t understand and are fearful of the answers to questions they don’t want to consider. The payoff comes at some future date when even if they still don’t understand, they learn to respect the consistency of those who dare to be different.

How will you celebrate your unique self today?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

The internet hums with suggestions to be more productive, run faster, finish the never-ending to-do list. Don’t slacken your pace. Continue to advance to the next great item guaranteed to make our day. We spend our time working hard and achieving our goals. The message is attaining our objectives will bring us gratification. We buy into the mindset, the lifestyle. One by one we reach the target and discover it leaves us without the fulfillment they promised.

If we are honest, we realize real pleasure, fun and enjoyment lie in the journey, the places we see, the individuals we met the lives we touch. The struggle is thrilling. Helping each other brings us an unparalleled joy.  These truths etch themselves on our souls and represent the stories we need to tell. These paths filled with hardship and hope are the journeys our readers want to follow.

How do you celebrate the journey?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

Impatience is my middle name. I want things finished yesterday. I make goals, devise plans, and get to work, only to feel like I am trudging through a never-ending quagmire. The best advice on goal setting is to dream big, so I set audacious goals and wonder when I don’t achieve them at light speed. I was reminded that progress is relative to the size of the endeavor.

Consider the twin spacecraft Voyager I and II. We launched Voyager 1 September 5, 1977, 16 days after Voyager 2. NASA fired them into space to take advantage of a planetary alignment that happens once every 176 years.  It allowed Voyagers to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. They designed the spaceships with a five-year lifespan but now, almost 42 years later, both probes are over 11 billion miles from the sun. Four decades sounds like a long time, but when you realize they are traveling at 38,027 mph, your perspective changes. (*NASA)

Maybe my perception is that I’m not making progress, but every day, each step moves me forward. If the Voyagers had quit after five years, they would have stopped at 11% of their current distance. I have reached nowhere near that percentage of completion, so I will follow my present trajectory and see how far it takes me.

Are you stepping towards your goals?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

It happens. Wednesday morning brushing your teeth, you realize you don’t recognize the face reflected in the mirror. Questions pour through the opened floodgate. Who are you? How did I get here? What have I become? How is this my life? Some people perceive deep feelings of emptiness and a sense of surreal dissociation. Others experience heavy depression which threatens to consume the remains of a shattered soul. What do I do now? How do I fix this?

There are no easy answers. One size doesn’t fit everyone. I know we possess great capacity, and unlimited creativity to identify the root issues and devise brilliant solutions. For me, conflict often arises from real-world hassles and the dreaded “should” list. The word “should” has been responsible for condemning me to countless thoughts and actions which didn’t align with my core beliefs. It requires courage to examine the pile, choosing whether to keep or discard the attached command.

It is a time-consuming, soul-searching process. Deciding which principles matter doesn’t happen overnight.  Karen Moning says, “The most confused we ever get is when we try to convince our heads of something that we know in our hearts is a lie.” We must press past fear, stop avoiding the tough questions, and answer them from our heart. No matter how scared we are, moving forward means heeding our intuition, trusting we will recognize our truth.

How do you find your authentic self?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

After a hiatus, I have restarted my yoga discipline. In the past, I had progressed to headstands, handstands, bow, and pigeon poses. I didn’t expect my practice relaunch to start at that level. I began with breathwork and basics asanas. From experience, I know I need to come to the mat embracing a beginner’s attitude, concentrating on breathing, listening to my body and using proper form. By focusing on tiny improvements, I trust I will make progress.

My yoga routine reminds me success lives in the details. To succeed, I must focus on fundamentals. They feel trivial, boring and unimportant. If you want to be a master in your field just getting things accomplished won’t get you there unless you are mastering essential procedures. The key is being disciplined and submitting to the promise of growth.

As a writer, I am constantly working on my craft. I realized I should emulate the same thought process I use in my yoga practice. I concentrate on studying the essentials, doing my best work daily and hoping to see small steps forward each time I study.

Every job has its own fundamentals. How will you master yours?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

We look at indecisiveness as a negative attribute. There is unquestionable value in the ability to decide and act. But sometimes being indecisive can have its advantages, especially if it involves multiple sides to a complex issue. Often, we don’t care. We will follow our friends to whichever restaurant or movie the group chooses, knowing the real joy is in the moments spent with our buddies.

Someone once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Being indecisive allows time to gather and digest facts essential to validating or disproving opposing points of view. We open ourselves to information which conflicts with our existing opinions. We examine the merits of both sides of an argument. The pause stops us from blindly following long-held convictions. It means we are self-aware and willing to consider if those doctrines still reflect our inner selves.

Indecisiveness provides an opportunity to analyze what might happen if we opt to answer “yes” instead of our automatic “no”.  We can weigh short-term gains against a future benefit which may far surpass an easy decision.

It is a valuable exercise to break from daily details and habits to give serious consideration to our assumptions. By questioning beliefs, indulging in contemplation, and trying new things, we find space to grow and find ourselves.

How can your indecisiveness improve your life?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer

Learning a new skill can be an exciting and terrifying experience. There are new skills to learn, a new lingo to speak and a huge expectation to succeed. We can feel like a kid learning to ride a two-wheeler, fearing falls, scraped knees, and broken bones. Half the battle with learning to ride a bike is gaining the confidence you can defy gravity.

There are tricks to help us succeed. The first trick is to set ourselves up for success. Setting small attainable goals and building on a track record of success puts us in the right mindset to attempt more difficult challenges. Give yourself a set of training wheels and then get on your bike and practice every day.

Have you set yourself up to succeed?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer