The Spark of Life
Hi Friend
It has been an artistic week. I visited my son and while there we went to the Art Institute of Chicago. He has lived there a few years and I had never gone. I like museums. I love creativity and imagination. I'm fascinated by what others create. There was a whole section on "miniature rooms" that people built. They replicate real rooms but are 2'x2'. It's wild.
I love modern painting. When done interestingly, painted scenes are cool. Definitely the abstract stirs my own thoughts. Sculptures and artifacts fascinate me. Portraits don't do much for me. Huge canvases whether paint splattered or ships at sea keep my attention. I can gaze for a long awhile appreciating the detail and effort necessary to achieve such a feat.
I'm not the kind of person who looks at art and considers what the artist was communicating. I totally reflect selfishly on what emotions it evokes in me and how my thinking is sparked by it. I've certainly been moved by art. Sometimes it's by the accomplishment itself as much as the end result. Human ingenuity is enthralling.
Every single one of us are artist. As kids, you and I accessed our imaginations deeply, consistently and without much effort. We possess gobs of creativity that we've stifled as we've aged. Art ignites that thing in us, as a reminder that we too carry limitless inventiveness. It's provocative because it challenges the dullness we've accepted as our identity.
DEFINING CREATIVITY
I have two friends I consider the "most creative" people I know. Their ability to fashion something from nothing astounds me. Their capacity to see what isn't there and then bring it to life for others to see is like magic. I don't possess the skills necessary to do something like that. However, creativity isn't a skill set. Our creativity is revealed through our abilities. That's what's so dang cool about it.
MAKE A SHIFT
If you deeply believed you are a creative person - matched with your skills and abilities - what kind of "art" would you be, or are you, generating?
It matters that we recognize our artistry. I'm not sure how it works exactly but the expression of our originative nature contains the spark of life. Whatever conduit or canvas we work with, captures a force that transfers to others. It's not hocus pocus, it's spiritual in nature. Somehow when we produce something, anything, from our creative core, it has the capacity to ignite someone else's soul.
GENIUS OF GREATNESS
At work when we are aligned with our sweet spot of gifts, callings and abilities they call it the "zone of genius." As you've seen with my new website, I'm instigating unlocking everyday greatness in you and others. I'm committed to such an undertaking because "everyday greatness" has embedded within it the effect it extracts from another. The transformational transaction that occurs at an atomic level when we're accessing our own unique innovativeness is the work of art we gift to humanity.
MAKE A SHIFT
What if this week at work you were mindful of the different creative-expression opportunities you had that would embolden your colleagues to paint their own everyday greatness?
I was so inspired in Chicago that when I returned home, I coerced my amazing wife to visit the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden late Friday night. It's claim-to-fame is a "cherry spoon." The more we're exposed to the igniting of our souls, the more we want it.
Embrace your artist identity. You probably don't paint or build sculptures, but your creativity is conveyed through your natural talents, skills and abilities. I hope this week you create a masterpiece that compels others to access their own creative center - their greatness. The more we do that, the more beauty we experience in life. That's a great shift!
