Tag: undeniable gifts

Far too many of us walk around regurgitating what others have said, doing what others have done, that we forget about our own "you-nique-ness", as I've called it before. We want "blueprints" and insider help from a so-called "guru". We want the answers when we don't even always know the questions yet. Yet, we see […]

January's over, and I'm about 5% of the way toward my BHAG of recording 300 songs in 2013. That's 21 songs toward my ultimate goal of 300. Only 279 to go! Anyone else would say "Holy crap! you've recorded that many songs!?! That's Awesome!" Me? I have to remind myself to not be all "meh" […]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiXWlbbOygk&hl=en_US&version=3&rel=0] It's all well and good to strive for excellence, but excellence is about more than just putting in your 10,000 hours. Those hours need to be focused, deliberate practice. Without that, you'll be hard pressed to reach the full potential of your undeniable gifts. Be warned: you can spend 10,000 hours of your […]

Got big dreams? Hold fast to them, and don't be afraid to pray for excellence. Many times, visionary creatives have lofty goals and ambitions, but we're met with staunch criticism when we share them. This forces us to either stop sharing, or aim lower. Don't be that person. Instead, when things are getting to you, […]

[Editor's note: This is part five in a series of year-end posts I write to focus my efforts for the new year. Here are links to parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.] Brave. That was the theme for 2012, and as I look back, I can say I'm pretty happy with where things ended up. […]

Entrepreneurs dream of success. We crave it. We stalk it. And some of us continue to be eluded by it. You've probably written down a number -- or certain other goals -- and then began bowing at the altar of “if only.” “If only I could have x, then I’d be successful.” “If only y […]

Often times, we as creators find ourselves in a bind. Okay, bind is not the right word. Neither is stuck. It's more like being trapped in a building that's collapsed. We're gasping for oxygen, battling with ourselves over whether we should scream out for help or conserve what little oxygen we have.

Seth Godin shared this video in a recent post about his TEDx talk. While it's geared to the transformation of the education system (and specifically, his "what is school for?" manifesto he wrote earlier this year), it has a LOT of juicy tidbits for creative entrepreneurs to get us thinking about art vs. work. What […]

I'm learning that many of my best posts come out of a convergence of three moments in my life. This post is no different. The first is a piece of my long lost past. Crawdads When I was a kid, the mother of a very good friend (who nearly committed suicide after his dad died), […]

Two years ago, I put together this video mashup of two scenes from Spider Man 2. In it, you hear Aunt May talking about how there's a hero in each one of us. I thought it was a perfectly inspiring underscore to Spidey's big train rescue scene. This video's been watched over 175,000 times to […]