Just got finished reading a blog post from Michael Michalko, one of the most highly acclaimed creativity experts in the world. As an officer in the U.S. Army, Michael organized a team of NATO intelligence specialists and international academics in Frankfurt, Germany, to research, collect, and categorize all known inventive-thinking methods. His team applied the methods to various NATO military, political, and social problems and produced a variety of breakthrough ideas and creative solutions to new and old problems.

Here is the link to his creativity enhancing book, ThinkerToys. I just ordered it and it is definitely worth checking out.

Now find out what it means to be an “I” instead of a “Me” by reading on….

We are tacitly taught that we exist and just are. We have been taught that all people are true to their own genes, environment and nature. We are conditioned to be objects. We are taught to be “Me,” instead of “I.” When you think of yourself as “Me,” you are limited. The “Me” is always limited. When you believe how others (parents, teachers, peers, colleagues, and others) describe you, you become that. You might want to be an artist, but others might tell you that you have no talent, training, or temperament to be an artist. The “Me” will say, “Who do you think you are?” “You are just an ordinary person. There is nothing special about you.”
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There is a Japanese masterpiece film IKIRU about the life on an old man that captures the essence of what it means to be a “Me.” Ikiru is a civil servant who has labored in the bureaucracy for thirty years. He determines his self worth by how others see him. He thinks of himself as an object and spends his life preventing things from happening. He is a widower who never remarried, as his relatives told him he was too old and unattractive to remarry. He is the father of an ungrateful son who despises him because he is not rich. He does not strive to better his career as he has been told by his supervisor that he lacks the education and intelligence to be anything more than a clerk. In his mind, he pictures himself as a worthless failure. He walks bent over with a shuffling walk with defeated eyes.
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When he is told that he has terminable cancer, he looks back over the wasteland of his life, and decides to do something of note. For the first time in his life he became the “I,” the subject of his life. Against all obstacles, he decided to build a park for poor children in a dirty slum of Tokyo. He had no fear and felt no self-defeating limitations, he ignored his son when his son said he was the laughing stock of the neighborhood, he ignored his neighbors who pitied him and begged him to stop. His supervisor was embarrassed and pretended not to know him. Because he knew he was going to die, he no longer cared what other people thought. For the first time in his life he became free and alive. He worked and worked, seemingly without stopping. He was no longer afraid of anyone, or anything. He no longer had anything to lose, and so in this short time gained everything. Finally, he died, in the snow, swinging on a child’s swing in the park which he made, singing.
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Ikiru became the subject of his life. He became joyous instead of miserable; he inspired instead of being indifferent, and he laughed at himself and the world instead of feeling humiliated and defeated. Ikiru “seized the day.”

Now my challenge to you is, are you taking control of your musical life? Are you holding yourself back with fears of not succeeding, having your family and friends look at you in ridicule, or afraid to branch out of your “comfortable” lifestyle? Take time this weekend to ponder this question. Get your grand vision and life goals together, and ask yourself, “If I knew I wouldn’t fail, what would I be doing?”

I know it sounds cliche, but the truth is, life without passion isn’t really living at all.

What are your thoughts?

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