Tag Archives: success

  • Home   /  
  • Posts tagged "success"

Creativity Is Not What You Think

What do you think of when you think of someone who’s creative? You probably pictured a painter, musician, or something else in the artistic realm. You probably didn’t think of someone searching for the cure for cancer or writing software to beat the stock market. Yet both of those are highly creative tasks.

Definition of create:
  1. To cause to come into being, as something unique that would not ordinarily evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes
  2. To evolve from one’s own thought or imagination, as a work of art or an invention.

It’s true that when many people think of creative work, they think of artistic professions – painters, sculptors, musical composers, and the like. Basically if you have to buy a ticket to see it, it’s a creative endeavor.

But is that really the case?

Read More

Why Do We Please People We Don’t Like?

pozega

The other day I was thinking about how I was going to miss a self-imposed deadline that I had told a lot of people I was going to meet. As I started thinking about how I was going to tell them I would miss it, I started thinking about what their reactions might be. In my mind, everyone except one person would say something like, “it’s ok. At least you’re making progress and moving toward something you really want.” But one person would say something like, “I knew you couldn’t do it.”

Whether these reactions are real or not, it bothered me that this one person would say something so negative. Then it dawned on me that I don’t really like this person much. They’re friendly and can hold a decent conversation for a while, but I don’t consider them anything more than an acquaintance. So why would their reaction bother me so much?

Read More

Talent is Overrated! Use This Instead

When you see a great athlete or musician or mathematician, do you think “wow, they’ve got talent!”? You may wonder how some people – other people – got their talent. I mean surely they have some innate gift that allows them to be so good at what they do, right?

You, on the other hand, couldn’t throw a ball or play an instrument or calculate a square root if your life depended on it. After all, you’ve got no talent.

This is complete and utter bullshit.

The only reason those folks can do what they do is because they spent a lot of time practicing and improving themselves. We get a glimpse of this when sportscasters do the stories of Olympic athletes. They’ll tell about how the person spent 4 hours every morning before work practicing and training. Then, after they were done working, they spent another 4 hours training. And if they’re lucky enough to not have to work, they’ll spend 10-12 hours per day training and practicing.

Read More