SHOULD THE 20 SOMETHING CREATIVELY GIFTED PURSUE ONLY ONE THING

Writing is one of my strengths. I love that it is the most direct way of expressing ideas that can spark up conversations and yes fuel a change. Design is my debut in the world of creativity (do check out my artwork). I loved the idea of individual expression through exclusively designed stuff. To me it was like being Picasso and having your work mattered in the practical realm. I have also been an amateurishly (potentially) good dubstep dancer and was recommended for a national level college face off under less than 2 months of practice. I cannot stop obsessing over its sheer aesthetic beauty when performed and its chameleon like quality to take any form and express the desired swag, funk, angst, etc. through music, style and settings. Humor and wit is where this list should end (maybe I should give youtube a try, I think I am hilariously funny), I have started to sound like a narcissistic Kanye West.

The Mind (poster colors)

Early 20's is a period of becoming radical in thoughts and actions, and growing up in the real sense. It is our life's startup and like 80% of the startups, we too are supposed to fail despite of all the blueprints etched in our minds about the ideal life. We try and fail in a cycle that never seems to end. Eventually we seek for a higher purpose that is above this cycle of success and disappointment. And ultimately like every successful business venture, we grow out of it because of the constant trial and errors that our life meets just like the stone on a river bed that meets the force of flowing water and gets deepened in the process. The foundation of our life's purpose is clearer and we can make a true contribution to the world.

2ND prize in WWF "Paint the Change" (painting depicting the effect of pollution on climate)

I idolize Steve Jobs and as much as I can, I take inspiration from his life. To quote him "Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains". Now replace the word 'thinking' above with 'life' and you get the simplest explanation of the way he lived. His early years was that of being a prankster, an electronics enthusiast and obsessing over the 60's elegant Eichler homes, droppind acid, quitting college, taking up a calligraphy course which later became synonymous with macbook's typography and the focus of the famous Harvard speech "connecting the dots in life", seeking spirituality in India, designing games at Atari, following Zen Buddhism impressed by its simplicity and finally founding his greatest contribution to the world, placing the most advanced technology in the hands of laymen like us, the personal computer. He was not one of those engineering department discipline from Harvard who after graduating worked at multinational companies devoting their 20's to compete with the high tech hobbyist targeting innovations of the Japanese. He was a creatively gifted who took inspirations from Zen philosophy, applied them to technology and created a line of simplistically useful Apple products. He asserts "We don't look at a competition and say how can we do it better, we look at it and say how can we do it different". Innovation has never come through studying the same subject but rather because ideas from various other fields were combined by someone who saw the connection.

Personally I have observed two kinds of people. The first are the ones whose single mindedness in a field have brought them the best skills and knowledge, but these qualities have changed the world only when channeled toward the big picture visions of the creatively gifted. 

Often when the world acknowledges only the former kind of people and expect them to take over the revolutionism department, innovation stagnates because they disagree to look beyond possibilities. They don't believe in the modest out of the box concept and live inside the walls provided by society. They take their skills and passions, love and relationships, status, hobbies, leisure and spirituality as the composites of life that are best kept away from one another. While the creatively gifted see life in its totality, observe the world around and within them and sense the need of the moment.

Under these circumstances, should we identify the creatively gifted fresh 20 year olds starting out in life under the definitions of ADHD, ADD, etc. and counsel them to settle toward a secure life or should we see them as our possible future?

-Both artworks by me

    

DISCIPLINING THE EGO, SPARING OURSELVES

Who am I? One question that lead you on a path of discovering yourself and by 20 gave you a fair idea about who you were and were not. Bright but lazy, hard working but average, good but not great. You felt superhuman because you had  figured out all your strengths and weaknesses. Self disciplining was your super power  and you set out on a mission to right the wrongs in yourself. You lost it. Here may be why.

"Self discipline is when you don't feel like doing something and yet you do it"- society

"Have fun with your work, when it's not, move on"- Virgin mogul Richard Branson.

How we wish the application of the second statement would make us billionaires too. And a handful of them who do, understand what should be disciplined, the ego and not yourself. The definition of discipline in a dictionary is "the practise of training self to obey rules or a code of behavior using punishment to correct disobedience". Now let's frame the very valued, life affirming two word again Self Discipline. How does it sound? Limited right. I am sure each one of you reading this post experiences often or many a times the presence of a higher self that comes as more authentic than all the ideas as the self you ever had. You may call it gut, intuition, God or simply being high. Do you now think that this self can be programmed like a computer and played within the walls of a word with a constraint meaning like discipline to mold in to becoming anything other than what it is? 

The core of not disciplining self simply addresses that you will be your best version when you don't constantly discipline yourself to cling to a past built idea about what you should be but acknowledge the adventurous, thrill seeking, boundaries pushing and ever changing optimist self that knows no rigid walls of "discipline". The meaning of Self discipline then becomes to know yourself and change, not to change in order to know yourself. This is possible by disciplining your ego which is as limited as the concept of discipline that the world has construed. Disciplining the egoic tendencies is important because as much as people have chained themselves with the force of external application of rules and orders so have they left themselves untamed because they couldn't differentiate freedom from being free in the dark. With your life that would simply mean to know whether or not you are into a course, a job, a relationship or anything that you desire because it is what your "self" wants or because you are directed or misdirected by the ego which comes with its own handicaps- laziness, esteem, idealism, to name a few.

Real change can only take place when we train ourselves to question rules and behavior using logic and wisdom and not through conforming to rules or behavior using punishment and reward. Richard Branson was not disciplined (in the worldly sense) had it been so the man would have given up when he quit school at 15 due to dyslexia but he surely was motivated to serve people by doing what he loved and only through knowing yourself, you also know your motivation to discipline yourself in the true sense.

The line between the ego and the self is blurred even today when the word Self discipline is focused on. It is still misguiding people in to not questioning the job they dread daily, the commitment both know has come to an end and the life that has now become a command. I went through a period of demotivation while writing this post but I knew that I wanted to share with people what I have realized. I overcame my egoic tendency to procastinate because I knew my motivation, discipline was not required.  Here is a book (international best seller "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle) you can download that will really get you started with any change that you desire in life simply by showing that you are not your ego.

The Importance Of Day dreaming (Yes, you heard that right)

We seek a lot of external adventure by traveling to the most enchanting places around the world and going to every nook and corner, to the highest peaks and the deepest trenches but we are comfortable with deserting our biggest gift in the exact same spot. Einstein didn't have to launch a rocket to space to find out how the Earth worked, he simply took himself there amidst daydreaming.

And it's sad that in a world where innovators are held highly, visionary and imaginative kids gazing outside the classroom are misunderstood and discouraged at this tender age where a cryptic fear of imagining and executing non-existent ideas takes over them. A potential theory that can change the world is forever lost. These authorities who are at times ourselves fail to see that the crazy idea which comes to you and to me whilst day dreaming and that which make us go "how cool!" are the very ideas upon which fortune 500 companies are built. 

Considering that this is the opening post of a blog concerned with change, what better thing is there to write about than the pioneer of the 20th century revolution, Albert Einstein. I happened to watch the documentary (link below) which made me think all over again why the utopia of creativity cannot be borne in the enclosed environment of a school lab or as a university credit project. Therefore, I am here to defend the imaginative forces at work which is always stigmatized as day dreaming. 

Have you experienced that very original thought which comes to you in a fraction of a second of deep silence amidst all the thinking of the "intellectual mind". Well, I have, still do and surely you have had it too. It is an action which is often described as "tapping in to the subconscious". This film shows it's tremendous power by documenting Einstein's life and how the Theory of Relativity which answered the biggest 'How, What and Why' of the universe and pretty much is the beginning of all the technological innovations at our service today was indeed a result of Einstein's genius level of IQ, prodigious mathematical skill, hard work, perseverance, impeccable academia, evolved human qualities, etc. etc.. But at the heart of it all was him fantasizing about travelling at the speed of light and questioning the nature of space, which generated his curiosity and consequential work on the ideas in the first place. Four ground breaking theories after that and the rest is history. And whether it was the subtle thought of the falling elevator which questioned Newton's established Theory of Gravity and the eureka moment when the thought of Pluto's unusual path around the Sun came to him as a universal clue, led humanity to see the conventional world in the correct way.

His imaginative subconscious powers manifested in the form of day dreaming and creatively saw connections in things which explained mysteries and opened doors to new understanding that would not be arrived upon had he went from A to B. As the man himself puts it "Knowledge will take you from A to B, Imagination will take you everywhere". And so I conclude "All imagination starts from day dreaming". What do you think?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlH2B_E1wE0