“If self-improvement worked, it would have by now. Getting where you want to be has everything to do with awareness, and nothing to do with willpower.”
Cheri Huber – from Unconditional Self-Acceptance (Audio CD)
She is founder and resident teacher at the Zen Monastery Peace Center in Murphys, CA, and the Palo Alto Zen Center. Photo from [...]
Leonard Bernstein spoke on the Edward R. Murrow–hosted radio program “This I Believe” in the 1950s. Perhaps you will also find his perspectives inspiring:
“I believe in [our] unconscious mind, the deep spring from which comes [our] power to communicate and to love. For me, all art is a combination of these powers; for if love [...]
A recent thoughtful appreciation of the acclaimed director by Patrick Goldstein ["He played by his own rules," Los Angeles Times Nov 22, 2006] illuminates some personal aspects of an exceptional artist:
Robert Altman cared; he did not stoop to conquer. As he said of today’s movie studios: “They sell shoes; I make gloves.” ….
Altman always had [...]
We live with a lot of mythologies and concepts about the “inspiration” and “craft” aspects of expression that influence how we approach doing something creative. One of those ideas is that anything so complex as a film script must necessarily take a long time to develop.
But screenwriter James Lamberg [coauthor of the "Movie in a [...]
One of the ways we can energize our ambitions and more fully use our talents is to enjoy role models in films.
In his article James Bond Has It – Do You?, Mike Litman provides an intriguing perspective on the enduring action character:
“Yesterday I saw the new James Bond movie,” he writes. “It was awesome. Put [...]
Previous research has confirmed that a high IQ in childhood is not a guarantee for eminence or creative productivity (Terman, 1925). Researchers within gifted education assert that personality factors and motivation are the most important elements of creative achievement and distinguish creative producers from others.
Csikszentmihalyi writes, “The unifying similarity among geniuses and innovators is not [...]
Viktor Frankl spent the war years in a concentration camp. Now I don’t suppose anyone has ever experienced more physical and intellectual abuse than those people that were in those camps.
But Viktor Frankl pointed out in a marvellous book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’, that no-one could force him to think something he didn’t want to [...]
Ani DiFranco [right] produced her album “Educated Guess” entirely on her own, as well as playing all the instruments herself.
[Q: Your approach, your energy on the current tour and on the new album seem different. Why is that?]
Ani DiFranco: The difference is solitude. I have it in my life now, and I didn’t for years, [...]
Much of the writing on this site – mine included – can get pretty serious. Often, the topics seem to demand or justify that. But it can really help to lighten up – even about important stuff like our personal growth and achievement.
In her article Infinite Underpants!, Rebecca Fine asks, “Quick! What’s the very first [...]
Rachel Weisz: Everyone walking around the planet is the hero of their own story.
Mike Myers: And they can justify to themselves every action that they make. Sidney Lumet said in his book [Making Movies], “Freaks are not the freaks we think they are. We are much more connected to the most outrageous behavior than we [...]
“Four years ago, I was a frustrated, fed-up writer, sitting in a Starbucks in Times Square in tears. I’d gotten 27 rejections on my book — ironically enough,it was about how to live your dreams — and I was sure my own dream of being a successful author was dead.
“At that moment, a little voice [...]
“Psychic ability can be used for life enhancement… I definitely agree with a quote of Jean Houston when she says, ‘I think a lot of giftedness, though by no means all, has to do with having a broader palette of perceptual capacity, being highly sensitive to all the senses.’
“But I think it goes beyond the [...]
