We are born to dream, imagine, and create new futures, solutions, and ways to improve life. Just observe an art class of five-year-olds. They are all creative.
Then, observe a class of high schoolers. Creativity is, by that time, educated out of most of them. Adulting and "real life" takes care of the rest.
A five-year-old with a piece of paper and some crayons is bound by nothing. They treat life like a master trumpet player treats jazz. It's all play and seamless exploration.
An adult is bound by fears of rejection, financial pressures, and traumatic experiences, and it's all in our heads.
In the words of Henry David Thoreau
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
If that is normal, we should rebel against it and reclaim our power to create.
In this episode of Headspace, I reveal the idea of developing meta-skills ( I should say re-discovering meta-skills). The skills that you possessed as a child and forgot by adulthood. Meta-skills are skills that accelerate all other skills.
Self-Awareness ( Metacognition) - how to know yourself and the heart's deepest desires.
Immersive Learning - how to learn faster and better.
Apprenticeship - how to make quantum leaps by truly learning from those ahead of us.
If you haven’t, watch my Headspace Live episode with Michelle Prince of Performance Publishing. She’s wonderful and is helping me publish my book. (We go live on YouTube every Wednesday around 1 pm CST). We discuss the power of personal branding and how publishing a book based on individual expertise can be part of that.
A study was done out of UT Austin on the role of a personal brand in the US. A few key takeaways are:
A personal brand is simply someone people recognize and trust. You can be a banker, plumber, pastor, or professor - a personal brand will help you help more people.
Personal brand is, without question, the future of marketing.
Gen Z, the emerging workforce of America, considers having a personal brand to be not about vanity or popularity but a critical and essential part of who to purchase from.
Over 50% of Americans say they'd trust more and spend more with a person who is not just the face behind a corporate logo but a known authority in the field.
A personal brand is a trust accelerator. 82% of Americans all ages say they are more likely to recommend, trust, and promote someone with an established personal brand.
Watch my conversation with Michelle Prince here.
What I'm reading: War on The West - by Douglas Murray. A disturbing but sobering book about the socio-political war against Western civilization. It was so distressing - I set it aside months ago. I was aware of this as I grew up in countries entirely devoted to dismantling Western civilization. I'm writing my own Little Book of Big Reasons to Love America; it seemed helpful to pick it up again for the sake of contrast. Still disturbing. In this case, however, ignorance is not bliss - trust me.
What I'm watching: We binge-watched The Chosen in the theater over Holy Week. 8 episodes over three nights. The series is consistently brilliant, imaginative, and inspiring. The New Testament comes to life in brilliant color and nuance.
What I'm writing: I posted another chapter of my Little Book of Big Reasons to Love America - Entrepreneurship is the Heartbeat. You can read the first few chapters here.