"The cocoon of middle age habit"

I'm still thinking about the reactions I got last night at a networking event when I asked for folks who wanted to join in on an impromptu musical jam (There was a stage with sundry instruments ready to go--how could I resist?). Simple questions ("Do you play any musical instrument? Sing a little? Want to join us?") were met with such revulsion, such instant "No Way"s and "You don't want me to"s that you would have thought I was inviting them to commit a heinous crime.



Despite our amazing expansion of personal freedom and choices, I often wonder if the permission we give ourselves to experiment creatively has changed much in the past 100 years. Let me dip into the archive for a little 20th century inspiration still relevant today.



"A childlike man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle age habit and convention." ~Aldous Huxley



"This creative power should be kept alive in all people for all their lives. Why? Because it is life itself. It is the Spirit. In fact it is the only important thing about us. The rest of us is legs and stomach, materialistic cravings and fears.

How can we keep it alive? By using it, by letting it out, by giving some time to it. But if we are women we think it is more important to wipe noses and carry doilies than to write or two play the piano. And men spend their lives adding and subtracting and dictating letters when they secretly long to write sonnets and burst into tears at the sunset.

They do not know that this is a fearful sin against themselves. They would be much greater now, more full of light and power, if they had really written the sonnets and played the fiddle and wept over sunsets, as they wanted to." ~Brenda Ueland, "If You Want to Write" (1938)

Reinvention Month 3: Moving with Chatter

For a sampling of recent blog articles on business innovation, click here or here or here or here. For more on creativity from Adam, use search field (top left) or click on keywords (bottom right) on his Innovation on my Mind blog.

I'm keeping up the fight to overcome what Stephen Pressfield calls "resistance." How do I keep moving forward? How can you move forward on the urge to create, build something, change something?

*Don't listen to the chatter. Pay no attention to the those rambling, disjointed images and notions that drift across the movie screen of your mind. THOSE ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS. THEY ARE CHATTER. THEY ARE RESISTANCE.

Chatter is your mother and father's well-intentioned expressions of caution, seeking to shield you from hurting yourself. Chatter is your teachers' equally well-meaning attempts at socialization, training you to follow the rules. Chatter is your friends' regular-Joe buddy-talk, trying to make you like them and follow the rules of the pack.

Okay, I'm getting better about the chatter. I'm letting it come and go like wind. Sometimes my hair gets in my eyes. Sometimes I have to sit down. But I'm moving forward. Now what?

*COVER THE CANVAS. ONE RULE FOR FIRST FULL WORKING DRAFTS: GET THEM DONE ASAP. Don't worry about quality. Act, don't reflect. Momentum is everything. Get to THE END as if the devil himself were breathing down your neck and poking you in the butt with his pitchfork.

DON'T STOP. DON'T LOOK DOWN. DON'T THINK. SUSPEND ALL SELF-JUDGMENT. THE INNER CRITIC? HIS ASS IS NOT PERMITTED IN THE BUILDING.

*from Pressfield's new book, Do the Work.

Embracing your Inner Outcast

This week I was at the southernmost point of the United States where I got a chance to mingle with outcasts and drunks on one of the coldest days in the warmest place in the country. Ah, Key West. If you ever make it to Rick's Bar on Duval Street, watch out for the most foul-mouthed and offensive "folk" singer on the planet.

But I spent even more time in Hollywood, FL, which got me thinking about the other Hollywood, where creative, talented outcasts can sometimes make it big. Though I was not much of an early fan, it's time to give credit the latest crossover Hollywood success, Justin Timberlake. Yes, it was surprising to see his acting chops in the recent movie Social Network but he has also earned his creative distinction with his ongoing appearances on Saturday Night Live, where he has proven to be one of the most unpredictable and funny performers in years. Check out his versatility in the video below (Facebook readers click here). Just like the previously praised Tina Fey, what makes Timberlake so extraordinary is his combination of cool talent--yes, he can sing and act--and willingness not to be cool at all. I mean, at all. He has somehow managed to give himself complete permission to be a fool--which we all need at least sometimes to be at our most creative.

"I was an outcast in a lot of ways," he recently told Ellen Degeneres on the Ellen Show. To kids: "Everything that you get picked on [for], or you feel makes you weird, is essentially what's going to make you sexy as an adult...I would not be here if I listened to the kids who said I was a terrible singer or a sissy. Be different." Now that might be easy for someone of such talent to say (and some weird things about us will never be sexy), but there is in an inner outcast in all of us that is sexy, or at least talented and worthy of much more exploration. The question is how to engage it and love it rather than give in to the conformist voices all around us that want to squelch and homogenize.



Originality is a hallmark (and key competency) for creativity, and anyone who embraces her own originality must at times accept--if not revel in--being an outcast. I particularly like what Mira Nair, the groundbreaking director of Monsoon Wedding, said when she was in Chicago earlier in the year speaking at Columbia College (see right). In many ways an outcast herself--an Indian woman director who found a way to bring stories of non-Hollywood-type outsiders to American screens--she explained that she thrives by putting herself in uncomfortable situations. “I like to do things I’m terrified by,” she said. "I don’t like to do things I’ve done before. I try to do things I don’t know if I can do." That's one way to embrace your inner outcast.

The truth is, when Timberlake released his "SexyBack" song a few years ago, I thought there was no way he would get away with his claim of "bringing sexy back." I mean, come on. But that song is passing the test of time and, frankly, it's a winner. I'm sure he was warned against it again and again, just as I'm sure advisors and commentators have questioned his decision to act or risk foolishness on SNL. Undoubtedly his outcast experience as a small town Tennessee boy ridiculed for singing like Michael Jackson has empowered him to follow his inner compass of creativity. Where is yours pointing you these days?