Tag: WordPress

Marvel-ous new skills

Posted on by philipdodson

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I blogged about this recently. We are told that you get to a point in life, where you are too old to learn new things. However, if you don’t try, you’ll never know.

I have committed, as part of my rituals of success that I set myself for each day and some weekly, to learn a new skill once a week.

If successful, that will be 52 new skills I will have enriched my life with over the course of a year.

Part of the fun will be coming up with new skills each week to learn, and I will aim to get bolder each week.

This week I have been learning a new drawing skill. I love art, and for much of my adult life I have not done art. It was one of those things, that fuelled with the brainwashing of our homogenised/industrialised world society, I had told myself was not important, and I should be focussing on more important things.

Since I have been doing more art again, I have not only become happier, more chilled and guess what? more creative too.

So, I have been learning how to draw people, cartoon style and comic style. I have previously found this very hard, well mainly because I had told myself it was hard and I can’t. Gradually this week I have been getting better and better.

Not quite Marvel standards, yet.

It’s a lonely road

Posted on by philipdodson

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If it was easy creating great things, we’d all be at it everyday, and then nothing would be created that was worthwhile or unique. Creating something different, unique, and new, takes time, takes effort, bravery and imagination.

It takes patience, through trial and error, through learning lessons and improving what you create next. The key though is to keep creating, keep sharing and keep connecting with others.

This initial phase of standing out, not fitting in, challenging the status quo, and challenging yourself, is the hardest part. It is a lonely place being different, it often means being ‘unfriended’, ‘unfollowed’ or simply ignored (OMG the terror, surely I am going to die).

The first thing that has to drive us to create, is pure and simply for ourselves, for our own sense of fulfilment and purpose. We have to follow our own why, our own values and be 100% ourselves in order to create the very best stuff. We also have to accept vulnerability and we have to learn courage.

Often though that takes us so far out of our safety zones that it is too scary to start. Even once you have started, the temptation is to row back to shore, especially as your peers are beckoning you back to ‘safety’.

As you drift further and further from shore, the journey gets very lonely. You start to question, you start to think about defeat, the chimp inside us is going mad with the stress you are putting him or her under.

The road to creating your very best, truly you, is a lonely road.

But the only way to be truly you, to be truly happy is to make that initial lonely journey to a better place. It starts with a choice to change, followed by being prepared to take that lonely road.

Eventually though you find your tribe, you find your place, and your creations get shared with the right audience that you have chosen.