Why You Should Live Creatively

I read an article recently in which a survey found that the following issues were problems for many respondents: happiness, fulfillment, freedom, peace, joy, confidence, and passion (meaning doing work that was exciting). Tennyson wrote that most people live lives of quiet desperation, and even if he exaggerated, it is true that many people do not find life meaningful or fulfilling. 

I believe this has reached crisis proportions. Viktor Frankl, who survived several concentration camps in WWII, wrote that we must find meaning in life to survive the trials that we experience. I believe that it is for lack of meaning that we turn to drugs, engage in consumption of baubles beyond reasonable amounts, and turn to violence.

Just as one measure of the problem, surveys of the workplace by Gallup have found that only 33 percent of employees are really engaged in their jobs. Said another way, 67 percent of us find no fulfillment or passion in our work. We do it to pay our bills and find some satisfaction elsewhere.

We need to remedy this, and my goal is to help people find ways to live meaningful lives. It requires that you take some responsibility for your life, and that you break out of the rut you are probably in. You do this by finding alternative ways of approaching life--that is, creative approaches. That is not the same as artistic. It just means to abandon the same old same old ways you have been engaging in, and do something different.

As a very simple example, you find a new way to go to work every day, and you pay attention to what you see along the way. Or you watch a TV program that is different from what you normally watch. Or try a new dish that you normally wouldn't eat. Or just take the family on a hike--it doesn't have to be challenging.

In my blog and the forthcoming newsletter, I will help you with ideas. I've also set up a website to provide you with a forum for finding ways to live creatively. Join me. Subscribe to this blog to receive my updates by email. Warm regards to you.

What Is Creative Living?

Creative living is the application of creative thinking to virtually every facet of your life. This includes your finances, relationships, parenting, leadership and management, entertainment, and learning.

You may be one of those individuals who say, "I'm not creative." I assure you that this may have been true in terms of your behavior up to now, but it is not true of your capability. 

For example, highly analytical thinkers generally believe they are not creative. However, I've taught creative thinking and the application of Whole Brain® thinking for 20 years, and I can assure you that even these individuals are capable of creative thinking. Interestingly, they usually do it in terms of analytical things. In other words, they create unusual ways of being analytical.

A few examples of creative living may help. Suppose that you want to learn something new. An instance of this was on a very old episode of the TV program Happy Days. One of the boys was taking an anatomy class and was having trouble remembering all the details of the skeleton. Another boy suggested the song that has a line, "The hip bone's connected to the thigh bone," and so on. He did this because the anatomy student loved music, and this memory device made remembering the anatomy lesson very easy for him.

Another example. Say you're having trouble getting a child to understand that teasing can go to the extreme and actually be bullying. Rather than lecturing, which often results in a polarity response from a child, you suggest that several children put on a play, in which they show how teasing can be harmful. There is a principle involved here: people don't argue with their own data. So by having the children teach the lesson themselves, they are more likely to internalize it than if they were taught the lesson.

In the next post I'll give examples of how you can use creative ideas to improve your relationship with someone you care about romantically. (No, it won't involve anything immoral.)

Until then, be a dev!ant (in a good way).

Life Should Be an Adventure

I've been really fortunate in my life. 

It didn't begin so well. My dad made $40 a week when I was born, working in a cotton mill in Mooresville, North Carolina. He had an 8th grade education, and my mother, who did finish high school, worked at a similar job until I was born.

In high school, I discovered amateur radio and built my own equipment, got licensed as K4SAM at age 16, and wanted to design radio equipment. I had no idea how to go about that, but a friend said, "I think you study electrical Engineering." 

"You mean go to college," I said.

"Yes."

Well, that lets me out, I thought. There was no money for college. In fact, my father thought I should be a TV repairman, because a local fellow had come out of the Navy and was the local TV guy, and I worked for him in the summer doing minor repairs on TV and Radio sets.

But I didn't want to repair broken sets. I wanted to design them.

Long story short, I borrowed the money to get an electrical engineering degree at NC State University, and designed communications equipment for 15 years. During the last few years of my industrial career I returned to NCSU while working full time and got a MS and then Ph.D. in psychology. 

In 1981 I left my job and began a new career teaching seminars. Leadership Skills for Project Managers eventually led to Project Planning, Scheduling and Control, and I have now written 12 books (published by McGraw-Hill, AMACOM, and Perseus), taught 60,000 individuals in 30 countries, and made more money that I ever dreamed possible when I was a boy.

So I am writing this blog from experience. My life has been an adventure, and even now, at age 77, it continues to be an adventure. I don't plan to go out having lived a life a quiet desperation, and I want to help you make your own life an adventure.

We'll discuss how to do that in the next installment of this blog. Until then, Be a Dev!ant. The good kind, of course...