Ella Winter

"Choose well: your choice is brief and yet endless."

— Ella Winter

Australian Journalist, Author 

1898 - 1980

I believe everything we do in life is a choice and that we need to take responsibility for our actions and not blame others.  The challenge is to make the right choices or at least to make choices.  When I graduated from college I was afraid to choose a direction to my life.  I didn't know what I wanted to do.  If I went down the wrong path it would be a disaster.  What I have learned is that the choices I made have led me where I need to be.  The challenge is to choose.  If you keep choosing you will eventually end up where you are supposed to be.  If you don't choose and let life happen, you may end up where you don't want to be.

Many people blame others for the circumstances in which they find themselves.  They are what I call "IF ONLY THINKERS."  They preface everything with the phrase: if only.  If only I had more money.  If only I had a college education.  If only my boss liked me.  If only I had better parents.  If only....If only....If only....

Usually we only have a short time to make a decision before the door closes and the opportunity passes.  Sometimes the opportunity will come around again and other times it won't.  I once had an opportunity to work for a trade magazine but I turned it down because I was happy with the job I had.  And the opportunity to work for a trade journal never came around again.  I sent out resumes, but noone responded.  I don't know how my life would have been different if I had accepted the position, but I have no regrets.  I am satisfied with the life I have lived.

The choices we make often send us in directions we never imagined.  New opportunities arise for us to seize.  Each choice we make leads us closer to where we are supposed to be.  We make a life by making choices.  What choices are you making today that will open up new doors for you tomorrow?

Eric Fischl

"What experience has shown me is that it takes your life to become an artist."

— Eric Fischl

American Artist

1948 -

Becoming a painter, a poet, or a novelist takes a lifetime.  We are always in a state of becoming.  If we stop growing and changing, if we plateau, we die as artists.  We are on a journey.  The work we leave behind is the record of our journey.

Where are you on your artistic journey?  What challenges are you facing today?  What challenges have you learned to overcome?  What are your dreams for tomorrow?  What paths have you taken?  What roads have you avoided?

Don't despair if you feel you have lost your way.  Maybe you have just taken a detour and you will soon find your way again.  What we sometimes feel are the wrong roads turn out to be the right roads in the end.  We often cannot see the forest because of the trees.  Climb up the nearest tree and your world will change.  

I often hear people complaining about the weather.  It's too cloudy.  Too rainy.  Too cold.  Too hot.  Can't see the sun.  Yet if we get in an airplane and fly above the clouds, the sun is there.  It is always there.  So don't become discouraged.  Instead change your perspective.

Here is Eric Fischl talking about one of his paintings.

Maurice Chevalier

"A man must have his dreams — memory dreams of the past and eager dreams of the future.  I never want to stop reaching for new goals."

— Maurice Auguste Chevalier

French Actor, Singer

1888 - 1972

What does your future hold for you?  Have you ever wished you knew the answer to that question?  How would change your life if you could predict the future?  Do you read your horoscope regularly?  Do you wish you had a crystal ball into which you could gaze?

I do believe that we often know what is going to happen to us before it actually happens.  Years ago I kept a dream journal where I recorded a dream of marrying my wife a month before I met her.  I am convinced that some of our nighttime dreams can predict the future.  Learn to listen to your subconscious.

But I am also convinced that we can predict our future by setting goals.  Goals give a focus and a direction to our lives.  Our lives are like a journey.  If we have a road map, we are more likely to reach our destination, to achieve our dreams.  Goals serve as the road map.  But like any trip, there can be detours, flat tires and accidents.  The road map is not the journey, only a guide.  And sometimes it is the side trips that are more interesting than the interstate.  And the people we meet along the way will touch our lives and teach us much.

So what is the road map for your life?  Where are you headed?  Are you on a side road or the main highway?  Are you hitchhiking through life or are you driving a Corvette?  Who is sitting in the seat next to you?  Who is in the backseat?  When you reach the end of the road one day (and we all will reach the end of the road), what is the legacy you will leave behind?  Will you have achieved your goals?  Will you have produced the art you dreamed of creating?  How will you remember your life?

Here is a video of Maurice Chevalier with Hermione Gingold singing, "I Remember It Well."  Enjoy.

Michael Chabon

"A book itself threatens to kill its author repeatedly during it composition."

— Michael Chabon

American Novelist

1963 - 

Do you an unfinished novel laying on a shelf in your office?  Do you have unfinished paintings hidden in a closet somewhere?  I spent 4 years working on a novel before I quit to write a book on pet loss with my wife.  Many published and unpublished writers have books they have never finished.  And the same is true with painters.  In fact, painters often paint over old paintings.

In an essay, Burn Before Reading, recently published in the New York Times Book Review (March 6, 2011), Dan Kois identifies a few novelists with unfinished novels. 

• Saul Bellow


• Truman Capote


• Michael Chabon


• Junot Diaz


• Jennifer Egan


• Nikolai Gogol


• Chang-rae Lee


• Harper Lee


• Richard Price


• John Updike


• Evelyn Waugh

So take heart, my friend!  You are not the only one who did not finish a novel, a painting, a song or a poem.  The difference between those who are successful and those who are not is the successful artists and writers keep creating new works even if the old ones are not finished.  So keep writing.  Keep painting.

Vincent Van Gogh

Self-Portrait

(1887)

"I have a more or less irresistible passion for books and the constant need to improve my mind, to study if you like, just as I have a need to eat bread."

— Vincent Van Gogh

Dutch Painter

1853 - 1890

Do you have a passion for learning?  Have you read a book in the last month?  Or are you, as some people tell me, too busy to find time to read?  If you read one book a month you are in the top one percent of the population.  Van Gogh was a lifelong learner.  If you are interested in seeing some of the 29 books I have read in 2010, check out my list on Goodreads.com.   

http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/2103162-harley?shelf=read-2010

Learning does not just come from books.  You can learn a lot listening to the people you come in contact with.  In the last couple of airplane flights I have had the privilege to engage in conversation with two interesting people.  One was a minister who has spent 15 years in Japan.  We shared a love of Japanese culture.  The other was a recent college graduate who found a job within a month of graduating which given the state of the economy was an amazing feat.  People from other walks of life can teach you a lot.  Do you limit yourself to communicating only with people you know?  Or do you seek out interesting people and learn from them?

Don't limit yourself to just learning about your field of interest.  Explore new topics.  If you are an artist, you should know everything you can about art, but you should also explore other areas of interest.  Take seminars and workshops.  Listen to audio books.

Here is one of my favorite Van Gogh paintings.  

Potato Eaters
(1885)

In one of his letters, Van Gogh described this painting:  "I have tried to make it clear how those people, eating their potatoes under the lamplight, have dug the earth with those very hands they put in their dish, and so it speaks of manual labor, and how they have honestly earned their food."

Linus Pauling

"Satisfaction of one's curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life."

— Linus Pauling

American Scientist

1901 - 1994

Are you curious about the world around you?  Are you searching for new information and ideas?  Are you asking questions and looking for answers?  Creative leaders seek out new ideas and new ways of seeing the world.  We want answers to our questions.  Part of our thrill in life is learning something new — figuring out something we didn't know.

Creative leaders need a strong sense of curiosity about the world they inhabit.  They are not satisfied with the pat answers of the past.  The challenge is in finding new answers to the age old questions.

Carol Emshwiller

"Stories do not change the world.  I've learned that.  But perhaps in some secret, subtle way . . . . I mean it's not the world I want to change."

Carol Emshwiller

American Novelist

1921 -

Sometimes as creative leaders, we hope we can change the world — to make it a better place for everyone.  Unfortunately, our vision of what we want the world to be and what it actually is rarely match.  And even the most powerful of people can not change the world to fit their vision.  We can have an impact on the lives of some people and can alter the small corner of the universe where we eat and sleep.  Maybe as Emshwiller says, we need to lower our sights.  If I touch one heart, changed one life, I have made a powerful difference.

If I want to change the world that I inhabit, I must first change myself.  As creative leaders, we must first work on becoming who we need to become before we change those around us.  It is very difficult to change someone else.  Husbands and wives understand this.  Those who learn to accept their spouses for who they are will be happily married.  Those who spend all their time trying to change the behavior of those they love, often end up bitter and angry.

Change is something that we enjoy when we are the ones who initiate it.  If someone else tries to change us, we put our foot down and refuse.  As creative leaders, our art, writing and music can touch people's lives and inspire them when they are ready to hear and see.  We all plant seeds and yet, may never hear if the seeds grow and bear fruit.  So we must hope that we have changed a few.

William Baziotes

"Each painting has its own way of evolving . . . When the painting is finished, the subject reveals itself."

— William Baziotes

American Painter

1912 - 1963

I know this is the way a poem happens for me.  I don't know what the poem is about until I'm finished writing.  The poem evolves as I write.  I know there are writers who outline everything they do.  They know what they are going to write every step of the way.  For me, it does not work.  I like not knowing.  The excitement is in the writing.  The same thing happens when I write a story.  Only at the end do I know what I was writing about.

Cyclops

(1947)

My drawing of masks is the same way.  I never know what a mask will look like until I am finished.  Art for me is also about discovery.  The joy is in the process of creation.  The joy is in not knowing where you are going.  

When I travel I am the same way.  I want to discover new places.  My wife and I once were on a trip with another couple.  They had everything planned down to the minute and became upset if we deviated from the plan because it put them behind schedule.  I can't travel that way.  The joy is in the discovery.

One of the things I have learned over the years is that writers have many different ways of working.  What works for one person does not work for another.  How do you work?  Do you map out your story in advance of writing it?  Do you know what your painting will look like before you start painting it?

Benjamin Mays

"The tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal.  The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach."

Dr. Benjamin Mays

American Author / Educator / Minister

1894 - 1984

Some creative leaders don't want to set goals because they are afraid they will not reach them.  But the truth is that people achieve more when they have goals then when they don't.  You may not reach the goal you set but you will come closer than if you had no goal.  And as many people learn, the joy is in working to achieve the goal, not in actually achieving it.  And when goal-setters reach their goal, they quickly set a new goal.  

I once met a 101 year old man who was writing his first book using a laptop computer in a nursing home.  I visited that nursing home a couple of years later and the man, then 103, was writing his second book.  What goals have you set for yourself?  Your work?  Your life?

Childhood home

of Benjamin Mays

Dr. Benjamin Mays must have been a master goal-setter for all that he accomplished.  Mays was the youngest of eight children born to tenant farmers and former slaves in South Carolina.  He earned a B.A. from Bates College in Maine, a Masters and a Ph.d in religion from the University of Chicago.  He received almost 30 honorary doctorates in his lifetime.  He was an ordained Baptist minister and an educator.  He became President of Morehouse College in 1940, a post he held for 27 years.  Mays wrote nearly 2,000 articles and nine books including The Negro's Church, the first sociological study of African-American religion.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who graduated from Morehouse in 1948, called Mays his "spiritual mentor" and "intellectual father."

J. C. Penny

James Cash Penny

founder of J. C. Penny

"I am grateful for all of my problems.  After each one was overcome, I became stronger and more able to meet those that were still to come.  I grew in all my difficulties."

— James Cash Penny

American Businessman 

1875 - 1971

What problems are you grateful for?  We all face challenges in our lives and we sometimes let these challenges affect us emotionally and psychologically.  We need to learn to be thankful for the gifts hidden within the problems.  Every problem we face has something to teach us, something to give us.  Creative leaders face problems and challenges in their personal and financial lives like everyone else.  The difference is that we have been given the gift of creativity.  Don't just use your gift for your art.  Use it to solve the problems in your life.

James Cash Penny, age 27

In 1898 at the age of 23 James Cash Penny went to work for a small chain of retail stores.  Four years later, he was offered a third ownership in one store for which he paid $2,000 dollars.  In 1907, he bought and owned three stores.  By 1912 he owned 34 stores.  In 1913 at the age of 38, he incorporated his business under the name of J. C. Penny.  By 1929 the company had 1,400 stores.  The stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression left James Cash Penny in financial ruin.  He borrowed against the cash value of his life insurance policies to pay the payroll in his stores.  The financial setbacks took a toll on his health and he checked himself into a sanitarium.  He later recovered emotionally and financially and spent the rest of his life involved in charitable works.

What challenges are you facing today?  What changes can you make in your life that will help you solve these problems?  The problems we face are gifts that can make us stronger and better artists and writers.  Be thankful that you have an opportunity to learn and grow into a better person.

St. Francis de Sales

"Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself."

— St. Francis de Sales

French Catholic Bishop/Writer

1567 - 1622

These days patience seems to be in short supply.  Most of us are in a hurry to get somewhere.  We hate to wait in lines.  We need to publish that first novel or have that first one-person show before we are thirty.  Sometimes the best things take time.  The best wines have aged for years.  We need to have patience.  It takes awhile to perfect technique.  And the person we are hardest on is ourselves.  We don't give ourselves the time to grow and develop.  Be patient with yourself and your imperfections.  Give yourself permission to make mistakes.  Have faith in your future.

Peter Ustinov

"The point of living, and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come."

– Peter Ustinov

British actor/novelist

1921 - 2004

No matter what age you are, the best is yet to come.  No matter where you are in your career, the best is yet to come.  Each day we live provides us with new opportunities, new ways to grow and new things to learn.  Colonel Harlan Sanders was sixty-five when he opened his first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.  Thomas Edison was sixty-seven when he reinvented the phonograph.  At seventy-seven, Grandma Moses began painting.  At eighty, Jessica Tandy won an Oscar for the film, Driving Miss Daisy.  Winston Churchill wrote A History of the English-Speaking Peoples at age 82.  Peter Ustinov acted in the movie, Luther, at age 83.  At ninety, Picasso was still producing drawings and engravings.  At age 93, P. G. Wodehouse was working on his 97th novel when he died.  Remember the best is yet to come.  

Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman

"I was an avid reader of history and particularly the lives of great men and women.  I found that some were born to greatness, some attained it by accident, and some worked for it."

— Harry S. Truman

American President, Author

1884 - 1972

As creative leaders we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before.  What do you know of the lives and works of these earlier artists, writers, musicians and storytellers?  What were the challenges they faced and the difficulties they overcame?  What creative ideas did they have that have made our work easier?  What knowledge did they have that has now been lost to the dustbins of history?  Which painters, writers and musicians are your heroes?

Most people are not born to greatness.  They usually work hard to achieve what they desire, but in the end the fame they find is often by accident.  So my advice is to work hard every day and enjoy what you do.

General Colin Powell

"There are no secrets to success.  It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure."

— General Colin Powell

American Author/Soldier

1937 - 

Some people look for the easy way, the next get rich scheme and the short-cuts to the top.  They don't exist for most of us.  If you want something bad enough, it takes preparation, hard work, learning from failure and persistence.  As artists and writers we understand this because we sometimes labor for years or even a lifetime with little or no success.  My words are simple:  keep writing, keep painting, keep living.

Michelangelo

"Your greatness is measured by your horizons."

— Michelangelo

1475 - 1564

Our progress is depended on our vision and the goals we set for ourselves.  If my goal is to own a house in the small town where I live, then I may never achieve the greatness I was meant to achieve.  If you want to achieve great things, then you need to set goals that will take you there.  Many of us underestimate our potential.  Set bigger goals for yourself.  See yourself bigger than you are today.  As an artist or writer, don't limit your opportunities.  Stretch yourself.  Shoot for bigger magazines and larger galleries.