paintedquestions:

Asked by Octav Druta. Image copyright: India Richer

Here is a very famous story that I found today and I would like to share it with you.

A number of frogs were travelling through the woods. Two of them fell into a deep pit. All the other frogs gathered around the pit. When they saw how deep the pit was, they told the two frogs that they were as good as dead.

Photo credit: Tim Heraud

The two frogs ignored the comments and tried to jump up out of the pit with all of their might. The other frogs kept telling them to stop, that they were as good as dead.

Finally, one of the frogs took heed to what the other frogs were saying and gave up. He fell down and died.

The other frog continued to jump as hard as he could. Once again, the crowd of frogs yelled at him to stop the pain and just die. He jumped even harder and finally made it out.

When he got out, the other frogs said, “Did you not hear us?” The frog explained to them that he was deaf. He thought they were encouraging him the entire time.

This story teaches two great lessons:

There is the power of life and death in the tongue. An encouraging word to someone who is down can lift them up and help them make it through the day.

A destructive word to someone who is down can be the push over the edge. Be careful of what you say. Speak life to those who cross your path. Anyone can speak words that can rob another of the spirit to push forward in difficult times.

Special is the individual who will take the time to encourage another. So my wonderful friends, always be kind and encourage others.

A question I painted for Paintedquestions.com.

The default future is a concept proposed by Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan in their book: The Three Laws of Performance. This is the future that each of us privately fear or hope for. It is not a fantasy we don’t believe in, but it’s something that seems like the truth about us and our future. For example, in a down economy, the default future for most of us is “spend less, work harder, grab for straws, panic that you’re likely to get laid-off or fired, be paranoid that others question your performance, dread the company won’t tell you how bad things really are - and hope or pretend that none of this is really happening, cross your fingers, pray for a miracle and wait for it to get better.”

Photo by Pablo Alfieri

Then there are the mindsets, which one can shortly describe this way: “Whether you think you can change things or not, you are right.” Have you ever heard this before? In her book called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol S. Dweck discusses two fundamental mindsets that people tend to adopt, the “fixed” mindset and the “growth” mindset. According to her, people who adopt the fixed mindset believe that “we live lives mainly determined by heredity and that most of our attributes are, if not carved in stone, largely resistant to efforts to modify them”. Those with a growth mindset “see themselves and their lives as amenable to choices and effort. They are not wishful thinkers who think that simply believing something is possible is enough to make it happen. Growth mindset individuals are willing to make the effort required to bring about their goals and to realize their dreams.”

These concepts are some interesting tools one can use in order to redesign our futures. How so?

Photo by Virginia Kraljevic

First of all, in order to change a thing you have to be aware about the fact that that thing exists. So start by acknowledging the existence of the default future. Then, based on what your daily actions, thoughts, fears, doubts are, envisage your default future. What does it look like? Is it something you want to keep or rather cut and start fresh?

Then, play a little bit with your mindset. What’s the category you fall in? Make sure you are sure that the change is possible.

On the third step erase everything: remorse, feelings of guilt, of pride, prejudices. Imagine you have a piece of paper with a drawing on it. Then, imagine you draw something another over that initial drawing. What would your masterpiece look like? In order to have a beautiful, accurate drawing you should have a clean piece of paper, right? Think of the masterpiece as your life. Make a cleaning first, then start designing your future.

Now you have the positive mindset of a powerful person. You have a clean space on which you can build. Fill it up wisely. Dream big and beautifully. Dream your most desirable future. Action ambitiously upon your dreams!

I wrote originally this post for Trigwee blog.

While reading Iulia’s interview with Kathryn Elyse Rodgers, a fashion illustrator whose works I love, I stumbled upon this question: “What are the most challenging aspects of your job?” Kathryn’s answer was not surprising for me so as, I believe, any artist has the same problem - the lack of time:

Illustration wise, is keeping up with everything since I have to do it all in my spare time. I’ve had some very overwhelming days, because I want to do almost every project that is requested, but there is only so much time in a day and at the end of the day I’m the only one that is working on it. I can’t go out and hire help. That is one huge challenge. It’s all on me! I love it so much though, that it’s completely worth it. I just have to start deciding which projects are more important, and which ones I have to let go of. The biggest stress for me is time.

So I started thinking whether it’s possible for someone else to “take” your talent and to do your job for you? Perhaps some of you will say NO! I would have said the same a while ago, too. A while ago, until I have read Coco Chanel’s story and until I have seen Karl Lagerfeld’s Spring Summer 2010 fashion show for Chanel.

So, the hypothesis I’m proposing is: You can “teach” someone else your talent. But, you really have to be passionate about what you do, love it with all your heart. So much as to give up your ego. You have to be willing to give your talent away. You really have to be grateful for what you have received and be generous. It’s more about the attitude than the action itself. The actions will actually follow. I believe this is what Coco Chanel did. That’s why the brand survived it’s creator. Her talent is still alive though the first hands that materialized it into clothes don’t exist anymore.

I agree, to “teach” someone else your talent is a big challenge, but there’s nothing impossible, right? What do you think?

Would you like a similar video for yourself?

I inserted in this post a beautiful story, told by Elisabeth Gilbert during her 18 minute speech at TED, in February 2009. While listening to it, something familiar triggered in my mind. I am one of those believing that credits on creative genius should be taken by the person who has delivered to our society a piece of work, although, I do believe that that there’s a universal energy trend that generates somehow a certain amount of artistic, scientific or other type of occurrences in a certain amount of time, no matter the person who makes them public. I am surrounded by people who certainly believe that credits on creative genius should be owned by an individual. And, maybe, it would be more appropriate to say that there is a minority only who doesn’t.

I do believe that this kind of vision on this matter brings war. Not only war in its political acceptance, but also in its social and psychological senses.

Painting by Patricio Villarroel

My perfect scenario concerning this subject would be 50% love for what we’ve created and 50% gratitude for being able to do this, even if the cause is unknown.

My narcissist friends, my arrogant friends, I dedicate this story to us. Let’s enjoy it together and make our own conclusions!

“In ancient Greece and ancient Rome, people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings. People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, or distant and unknowable reasons. The Greeks famously called these divine attendant spirits of creativity, “daemons”. Socrate, famously, believed that he had a daemon who spoke wisdom to him from afar. The Romans had the same idea, but they called that sort of disembodied creative spirit a genius. Which is great, because the Romans didn’t not actually think that a genius was a particularly clever individual. They believe that a genius was this, sort of magical divine entity, who was believed to literally live in the walls of an artist’s studio, kind of like Dobby, the house elf, and who would come out and invisibly assist with their work and would shape the outcome of that work. So brilliant - there it is, right there that distance that I’m talking about - that psychological construct to protect you from the results of your work. And everyone knew that this is how it functioned. So the ancient artist was protected from certain things, like, for example, too much narcissism, right? If your work is brilliant you couldn’t take all the credit for it, everybody knew you had this disembodied genius who had helped you. If your work bombed, not entirely your fault, you know? And this is how people thought about creativity in the West for a really long time.

And then the Renaissance came and everything changed, and we had this big idea, and the big idea was: let’s put the individual human being at the center of the universe, above all gods and mysteries, above mystical creatures who take dictation from the divine.  And it’s beginning of rational humanism, and people started to believe that creativity came completely from the self of the individual.  And for the first time in history, you start to hear people referring to this or that artist as being a genius, rather than having a genius.

And I got to tell you, I think that was a huge error. I think that allowing somebody, one mere person to believe that he or she is like, the vessel, like the font and the essence, and the source of all divine, creative, unknowable, eternal mystery is just like a too much responsibility to put on fragile, human psyche. It’s like asking somebody to swallow the sun. It just completely distorts egos, and it creates all these unmanageable expectations about performance. And I think the pressure of that has been killing off our artists for the last 500 years. And if this is true, and I think it is true, the question becomes, what now?

Can we do this differently? Maybe go back to some ancient understanding about the relationship between humans and the creative mystery. Maybe not. Maybe we can’t just erase 500 years of rational humanistic thought in one 18 minute speech. And there’s probably people in this audience who would raise like really legitimate scientific suspicions about the notion of, basically fairies who follow people around rubbing fairy juice on their project and stuff. I’m not, probably, going to bring you all along with me on this. But the question that I want to pose is - why not? Why not think about it this way? Because it makes as much sense as anything else I have ever heard, in terms of explaining the utter maddening capriciousness of the creative process. A process which, as anybody whoever tried to make something - which is to say basically, everyone here - knows, does not always behave rationally.”

I don’t know how many of those who stopped by, asked themselves about the meaning of this blog’s title, but at least one person and I needed to read/write a post that would explain it.

First of all I have to say I like diversity, I like new, I like change and I like exploring, and experiencing. That is, I am going to write on different themes. So, trying to find a suitable title that would somehow define what you can read here, I have chosen “Beauty over war”.

And this is how I define this metaphor:

Beauty = strength, beauty, creativity, art, generosity, responsibility, color, will, courage, forgiveness, understanding, openness, integrity, unity, joy, support, love, freedom, dreams, faith…

War = splitting, ugliness, weakness, envy, fight, theft, discrimination, evil, revenge, humiliation, limits, frustration, fear, misery, selfishness, hate, slavery, mistrust, disorientation, hesitation…

Photo by .nevara

All positive and negative that happens inside or outside is because of us creating beauty or war. It’s us who always choose. My manifesto is to choose consciously beauty over war!

… You don’t need to start a war.

“If you want it badly enough, and are willing to
make some changes in your life to cause it to
happen, you too can take over the world… or
do anything else you really want to do.  Yes,
you really can have it all.  The only things you’ll
need to give up are assumptions, expectations,
and the comfort zone that holds you back
from greatness.”

By Chris Guillebeau, “A brief guide to world domination”