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Talent Development Resources.........nurturing talent : page 3
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Some of us have great runways already built for us.
If you have one, take off!But if you don't have one, realize it is your responsibility to grab a shovel and build one for yourself and for those who will follow after you.
Amelia Earhart ... [quote and photo from womenfly.com]
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Imagine that your skills and natural talent fuel your passion, and that your passion is your work; your day is filled with work, learn and play activities inspired by your passion. Imagine that you do not stop learning at a certain grade level, or upon receiving a diploma, but that learning is a life-long mission that you eagerly embark upon because you learn only that which truly interests you and assists you in better sharing your passion with the world community.
Imagine your home and your family is the base of your wealth - your laboratory, your safe harbor, your storehouse of knowledge, your academy of higher learning, your fountain of personal growth and development; your headquarters for communication, interaction, commerce, investment and mutual benefit within the Global Network Economy.
from essay Your Guide to Modern Living - A Manifesto for Living in the Modern World by Raymond Pirouz
excerpt and photo from his website raymondpirouz.com~ ~ ~ ~
If we want to really listen to our inner self, to our own truth, we must set the Inner Critic aside for a while. When self-criticism and external standards are removed, the expressive arts allow our soul voice to flow through more readily. .... If fear has you in its grip at the mere prospect of art making, then all I ask is that you stay with the process [in this book] and see what happens. Give it a try. You will not be judged or critiqued.
The only critic you will have to contend with is the one inside your own head. Those are the old beliefs and attitudes that stop you from listening to your heart's desire and to your true self.
*excerpt from : Living With Feeling: The Art of Emotional Expression - by Lucia Capacchione
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.. .. After a while reality relents and you are allowed to cross the threshold into new creation. As social artists, how do you get around this ambivalence, not be plagued with feelings of suicide as was Hemingway or driven to drown one's creativity in drink or drugs, as were too many or get caught in one or another obsessive cycle of some repetitive action or task that would take up so much of your time and interest that you could justify your lack of creation. There are I believe several ways. One is to observe your nausea quotient. I find for example that with myself, that whenever I am staying away from creation too long either in small or larger cycles I am afflicted by little and then larger increments of nausea. |
I
am caught in a static loop and the nausea warns me that it is time to get
back to the task or experience even greater nausea and self-disgust.
Another is to take everything that you really are ambivalent about -- men, women, your own inadequate childhood -- and write it out, play it out, turn it into satire, make it interact with the wildest associations. One of the great hidden talents that all human beings have is for associative thinking, and there is something about the impossible association that breaks the hold of the ambivalence over us. Picasso, for example, whose wife spent four hours every morning just coaxing him to get out of bed and get on with it, could only actually do so after he had thought of an impossible association that would shatter all expectations. Another way is to get a high tolerance of ambivalence, what Keats called a Negative capability which he describes as being when a person "is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." What we would now call holding the tension between things, or living at our edges. Fortunately, we live at a time that is History at its edges, and which demands our genius as well as our ability to act. Jean Houston from
her essay [on her site]
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*related pages:**courage / confidence.......mental health...[front page].......self-limiting
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| There
is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you
into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression
is unique.
And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. Martha Graham - in book: Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham by Agnes De Mille |
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| There's
a complement to creative laziness, which is the other extreme. Some people
actually increase their creative vigor by working - creatively working
and multitasking lots of different things.
And while other people are dropping dead just looking at them, they're revitalizing themselves. You'd think that somebody who finishes a project that would kill most mortals would want to rest. But in fact it's the creative fever that energizes them. It's unbelievable. It's a fast burn all the time. Feels great. Todd Siler, PhD [first visual artist to receive a doctorate from MIT] from transcript of Can You Learn to Be Creative? - a Closer To Truth program] // book: Think Like A Genius |
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Creativity isn't reserved for artists and inventors -- it's a capacity we all share.For some, it's a desire for self-expression; for others, a drive to explore possibilities.
Genius isn't essential, just curiosity and an open mind. The fruit of creativity is self-discovery.Find a quiet spot and consider these questions:
1 There are many kinds of artists. Are you an artist of life -- an inspired cook, a master of diplomacy,
a stylish dresser? Write down all the ways you bring beauty, harmony, or flair to your surroundings.2 What art form would you try if you didn't care about results or your performance? Think back to
childhood: Did you enjoy ballet class or banging on a drum? How could you reconnect with that sense of fun?3 Creative people are problem solvers. If you could clear up any issue in the world -- or your world --
what would it be? What would be your first step?4 Is your talent appreciating the creative efforts of others? What do you most enjoy looking at
or listening to? Would you enjoy it even more if you tried to experience the artistic process firsthand?5 Envy is a message from your creative core. Whose talent would you like to have? How could you
develop your own ability in that area?<< from O, The Oprah Magazine, November, 2001
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"Ask yourself these questions and answer them honestly: What do you want? And how will you know when you get it? People really do have their own solutions... If you want to come up with good decisions for your work and your life, simply ask those two questions-because it all comes down to very simple things." Richard Leider [Fast Company mag. February 1998]
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| It
was about the fourth time my daughter Katie had made cookies on her own.
She was 12, which is precariously close to 13, which in humans is not an
age but a serious mental disorder.
As Katie whipped the flour into the butter before adding the eggs, her father nudged her aside, taking the electric mixer from her hand. "No, not that way," John said. "Here's how I do it." Our
usually timid daughter yanked the mixer back and said, with cool conviction,
"I really don't give a damn how you do it."
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John
and I stared at each other across the kitchen, thinking, as it later turned
out, the very same thoughts: that neither of us ever would have spoken
to our parents that way;
that Katie's collision course with puberty was revealing new, profoundly bitchy aspects of her personality; and that we couldn't have been prouder. It had taken each of us nearly 30 years to claim clear identities, to stop censoring ourselves in deference to the social pressure that weighs so heavily on every human being not raised by wolves (wolves are bitchy by definition).
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To
be truly creative we must be willing to say to every other person on earth,
"I really don't give a damn how you do it."
Your creativity will likely never emerge if you don't let your bitchy side do its work. ... Let your bitchiest side attack your shame, actively and aggressively, until you are certain that no choice you make is based on either the fear of being shamed or the intent to shame anyone else. Martha
Beck
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photo of Martha Beck from Oprah.com // Alison Arngrim as Nellie Oleson in the tv series based on the book Little House on the Prairie
Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel.
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About
eight months ago, I began culling stuff for ["Happiness"]. I made some
weird trips, because I realized I was bored with what I was doing. I needed
another point of view. I needed to put myself in uncomfortable places.
...
Fortunately, my parents always said, "You know what, you don't to have to decide what you're going to be, ever. You can be something different every day if you want." I'm just doing what they told me to do: Do a little of this and a little of that, don't get trapped. .....Laurie Anderson - from article: Her Private Happy Meal***image from Laurie Anderson site: laurieanderson.com |
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 "In many ways it is my lack of education that is my greatest asset because I find it easy to think out of the box, having no preconceptions or pre-training. |
I
tap into the source by using meditation, prayer and silence to access a
universally available wisdom and I have developed a wonderful team of experienced
advisors.
"My advice to others who feel limited by lack of formalized education would be to pick up courses on the things that are yours to learn, learn to access an inner wisdom and always have great people around you who are better than you. Using this approach, I don't think that one is limited in any way. It turns an apparent limitation into an asset." Lenedra J. Carroll |
****Lenedra J. Carroll is an accomplished businesswoman, singer, artist and author;
****manager and mother of recording artist Jewel. [quotes from New World Library interview]
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.. .. |
Their
struggle to bring a sense of balance, proportion, design, and beauty to
their creations involves an ongoing process of experimentation, learning,
skill-building, attention, and self-reflection.
Equally important, through practice, artists evolve a heightened capacity for feeling and perception that makes them better able to sense the emerging possibilities of their work that were not apparent when they began. from article
Work as a Vocation and Practice
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"I like to remind myself of a line by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado...
'There is no path. You make the path when you walk.'
And that is how I live my life ... always forging my own way."Antonio Banderas [Parade, Oct.10.99]
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"Before blaming external obstacles, you need to ask whether there are obstacles in yourself
that are proving to be barriers to creative expression."
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It's not
necessary [to have a strong work ethic anymore] -- nowadays we have technology
to do the work for us. I used to practice piano for hours, and now, with
a synthesizer, you can input the music and the machine perfects the song.
That's why we have so many people in the music business who should be plumbers.
They don't really understand music because they haven't been trained.
Quincy Jones [O, The Oprah Magazine, Oct. 2001] President & Chairman of The
Quincy Jones Listen Up Foundation
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 My background was very split between natural science on the one hand, and display and presentation on the other. I had a terrible time with that split for a very long time in my life -- I'd say a decade or 15 years, really, really struggling, knowing there was something that I just wanted, needed to do that was going to bring all of this together in some kind of meaningful way. |
And it actually all just came together one Saturday morning.
.... I was just sitting there and it was just like somebody had dropped
a locomotive on me. It wasn't like being hit by a train, but having one
fall from the sky. All of a sudden the idea of what I wanted to do just
came with just such extraordinary clarity: that more than anything in the
world what I wanted to do was to have a museum.
David Wilson -
related book: Weird Science : A Conflation of Art and Science by David Wilson |
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"Some people
regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me
free to fly." Julie Andrews
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Chuck Close: "Ease, I think, is the great enemy of the arts. It's important
to keep an edge, a degree of difficulty ... to push yourself to do something
you haven't done before." [painter; paralyzed- works from wheelchair]
**video:Chuck Close: A Portrait in Progress
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"There are two parts to influence: First, influence is powerful; and second,
influence is subtle. You wouldn't let someone push you off course, but you
might let someone nudge you off course and not even realize it." -- Jim Rohn
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The bigger the calling, too, the more likely it will fling opposing energies
into your life. One part of you wants to awaken, another to sleep.
One part wants to follow, another to run like hell.You understand the calling psychologically, but not logically.
I have heard it said that heroism, or heroinism, can be redefined for the modern age
as the ability to tolerate paradox, to hold seemingly opposing energies within us
and still retain the ability to function."Thus a heroic approach to the oxwork of bringing calls into form is one
in which you take them on with no illusions, knowing that your endeavors will
always be attended by the conflict between the voices of faith and doubt,
whose concussive debate will pit your soul against your mind in a boxing ring."It means following your heart and contending with whatever spills from it
when it tips. It means knowing that whatever you gain by taking
risks -- new freedom, new love, success, power, a dream come true --
you will also suffer loss, and that loss is a skill."Gregg Levoy - author of Callings: Finding and Following An Authentic Life
quote from Online Noetic Network newsletter: wisdomtalk.org
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"You must take my [architectural design] as it is, or not at all. A building has integrity,
just like a man. And just as seldom. It must be true to its own idea, have its own form
and serve its own purpose. .. I set my own standards."Howard Roark - played by Gary Cooper in the movie based on the book: Ayn Rand The Fountainhead
related video: Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life
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