The Profit Prophet

All of us want to be happy, but few of us actually feel that way most of the time. Of course, we all experience bouts of happiness, but in general, only about 20% of the people are happy most of the time. So, what keeps us from being happy, or more precisely, but experiencing a continuous state of happiness? There seems to be five mistakes that are common on the road to happiness. Believe it or not, the first one is to try to figure out if we are happy or not! When we try to pursue happiness as a goal, we often want to experience more joy and contentment…than we had before. So, to find out if we are making any progress we start to compare our past state of happiness to our present condition. This creates its own ennui of dissatisfaction. As soon as we start to compare, we move from the experiencing mode into the evaluation mode. To be truly happy (and there are decades of research on this), you have to be totally absorbed in what you are doing. Think of being engrossed in a good...

I was recently reading a "How To" by Hugh MacLeod (the founder of gapingvoid ) and it occurred to me that I also have a short list that I have learned about creativity, and I will share it below (some Hugh & I share BTW).  My list follows: How to be creative my Hugh MacLeod 1: Do Not Listen to Naysayers 2. Surround yourself with free thinkers 3. Make lots of mistakes (this is real creativity) 4. Practice, Practice.. see #3 5. Sing in your own voice (do what YOU want to) 6. Make your OWN mistakes 7. Do NOT think of what cannot be done...just do it 8. Focus on the art 9. Do exceptional work for the few who will appreciate it 10. Put all your heart into it. 11. Make sure what you are doing is really different (no copies) 12. Be original..rather than a poor copy of someone else 13. Realize that what you are doing is a gift..you may get nothing for it, but do it anyway Sorry, that is it...short and sweet...just do it...there is no 2nd place for doing 1st rate...