Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The purpose of life is not to be happy.  It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that  you have lived and lived well."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

American Poet, Speaker, Writer

1803 - 1882

Too often people spend their time trying to find happiness.  Instead, they should be seeking ways to make a difference in the lives of others.  Happiness is never permanent.  We may experience moments of happiness, but we will not stay in that frame of mind.  Seek instead to be useful — to help others in their time of need.  If we focus on helping others and worry less about our own happiness, we will wake up one day and find that we are at peace with ourselves.

Why were you born?  What is your purpose for living on this planet?  When you reach the end of the road one day and look back across your life, what is the legacy you want to leave behind?  I believe we each have a reason for being born and part of our mission in life is to discover our purpose for being.  How would the world be different if you had never lived?  Ponder that question.  How many lives have you already touched?  A few years ago someone told me that I had inspired him to become a nursing home administrator.  I did not remember the young man, but he had heard me speak and was inspired.  And I sure you have made a difference in the lives of people you never met.  Has someone been inspired by a poem, a story or a novel you wrote?  Has someone been inspired by a picture you painted?  Maybe someone bought a painting from you and hung it in their living room.  And every time they look at it, they experience a moment of happiness. 

Here is a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Maybe it will inspire you years after he wrote it.

The Apology

Think me not unkind and rude,

That I walk alone in grove and glen;

I go to the god of the wood

To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I

Fold my arms beside the brook;

Each cloud that floated in the sky

Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band,

For the idle flowers I brought;

Every aster in my hand

Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery,

But 'tis figured in the flowers,

Was never secret history,

But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field

Homeward brought the oxen strong;

A second crop thine acres yield,

Which I gather in a song.

Gordon B. Hinckley

"Go forward in life with a twinkle in your eye and a smile on your face, but with great purpose in heart."

— Gordon B. Hinckley

American Author, Religious Leader

1910 - 2008

Do you know what your purpose is?  Why you are alive on this planet in the 21st century?  We all have a reason for being.  Some people take a lifetime to figure out their purpose in life.  Others know and understand what their purpose is at a very young age.  Purpose is what gives our lives meaning.  Purpose requires that we do some soul searching to help us understand why we live the life we have chosen.

I believe that everything in life is a choice.  We choose how we want to live.  Sometimes by not making a choice we have chosen.  If you don't like something in your life, then choose something different.  We have no choice over what happens to us.  Our key choice is how we respond to what happens to us.  Do you have a twinkle in your eye and a smile on your face?  Or are you grouchy and grumpy?  Do you respond to the hand that life has dealt you by moaning, groaning and griping?  Or do you pick yourself up and stay focused on your purpose — the great reason you are here?

On the days when you are discouraged, refocus on your purpose.  Remind yourself of where you want to go — of the legacy you want to leave behind.  

Paula Rego

"To find one's way anywhere one has to find one's door, just like Alice, you see.  You take too much of one thing and you get too big, then you take too much of another and you get too small.  You've got to find your own doorway into things."

— Paula Rego

Portuguese Artist

1935 -

The doors we open and the doors we close hold the keys to our success.  What doors have you failed to open that would catapult you miles down the road?  What doors if you learned to shut them and throw away the key would prevent others from zapping your energy?




The door is an amazing invention.  It keeps out those people we don't want in our lives yet allows us to choose who can enter and keep us company.  The door serves a similar function for creative leaders.  We can keep out those elements of our lives that we don't want to appear in our art and we can invite in what we want to appear in our art.

The Family
(1988)

To paraphrase the poet, Robert Frost, doors make good families.  Doors give us privacy and keep prying eyes from seeing what we don't want them to see.  Some doors are simple and others are complex.  Some doors have intricate designs and others are plain.  Doors help us to manage and control our lives.  Doors help us to hide things we don't want people to see and to reveal things we want people to see.




Can you identify the doors in your life?  Do these doors help you be more creative or do they restrict your creativity?  Do you need to replace some of the doors in your life?  Do you need to add doors to your life?
















Here is a video with more of Paula Rego's 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.

David Frost

"Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally."

Sir David Frost

British Journalist, Writer

1939 -

There is a paradox here.  If you seek success, you rarely find it.  If you do what you love, you will be successful even if it is not in the way that you imagined it.  As I grow older, I begin to define success less as money and fame and more as loving relationships.  The same is true of my artistic work.  It becomes less about the money and fame, then it is about the process of creating.

What is your passion?  What is your love?  Are you following your passion?  Are you doing what you love even if it is for only five minutes a day.  I dreamed for years of writing full time, but it was not to be.  But I have spent lots of hours writing.  The value is in the writing, the creating, not in doing it full time.  I challenge you to find 15 minutes every day to do what you love.  Don't wait until you can do it full time because it might never happen.  Do it now and success will follow.  Just be ready for the unexpected.  If life throws you a wrench when you are making other plans, just tighten the bolts and keep going.

Mother Teresa

"It is not what we do, it is how much love we put in the doing."

— Mother Teresa

Catholic Nun

1910 - 1997

Do you put love into what you do?  As creative leaders we should love the process of creating.  The more love we put into our work; the more creative the end product is.  If you don't enjoy the process, then why do you do it?  Are you doing it for the wrong reasons?  For money?  For fame?  For sex?

Some writers and artists struggle to produce work.  I once read about a writer who published his first novel in his thirties and didn't publish his second until he was in his eighties.  For some people the creative process is difficult work.  I suggest you put love into your work and you might find it more enjoyable and less painful.  The journey we take is often more important than the destination.  We find out who we are and why we are here through the process of creating.  

The process of creating is a form of prayer — a connection to a power beyond ourselves, to a purpose bigger than us.  When we lose connection with this creative force, we stumble and struggle to create.  Writers and painters both talk about being in the flow — of something greater than themselves actually taking control and doing the creating.  They are only the instrument in the hands of the creative force.  They connect through love.

Douglas Adams

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."

— Douglas Adams

1952 - 2001

English novelist

When we are young, we have lots of dreams of what we want to do with our lives.  When I was in junior high, I wanted to be an architect.  My father was a general contractor and build over 300 houses in his lifetime so I am sure that was an influence on my dream.  But in recent years, I realize that I had as a child a desire to draw which no one encouraged.  When I was a sophomore in high school I made a commitment to be a minister.  By the time I was a senior in high school I had lost my faith in religion.  In college I dreamed of being a writer.  My life may not have turned out as I imagined, but I believe it turned out better and I became what I was meant to be.

I have spent more than 35 years writing poetry and short stories.  I have published 14 books and hundreds of poems.  I have spent over 20 years as a motivational speaker (ministry) touching people's hearts and souls.  And late in my life I have turned to painting masks.  I know I ended up where I needed to be and did what I needed to do.

I believe that we are all here on this earth to learn lessons and grow.  Everything that happens to us will teach us valuable lessons.  The choices we make will lead us down the roads we need to travel.  We will arrive where we are meant to be, having learned the lessons we were meant to learn.

When I was 50 I wrote an article, "What do I want to be when I grow up? Or how I found myself!", that appeared in my college alumni magazine.  In the article I describe how became what I was meant to be.

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."

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

"Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose."

— Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Swiss Psychiatrist & Author

1926 - 2004

Silence is where our work as creative leaders begins.  We must go back to the well of silence again and again to refresh our spirit and restore our sanity.  There is a lot of noise in our society today that will cloud our thinking and hinder the flow of creativity.  The noise of multiple voices rises from the traditional media: newspaper, radio and television.  And the noise is multiplied a hundred times over today by the cell phones, the internet and social media.  Each of these technologies has value and can contribute to our success, but we must manage and control their use, not let them control us.  We must sometimes go silent and cut ourselves off from the noise.  We must go deep inside and experience the silence.

And in the silence we will know and understand our purpose.  If we lose sight of our purpose, we will lose our way and become lost in the noise and chaos.  The silence allows us to find ourselves and to stay focused on what is important and why we are here.

Are you in touch with your purpose?  Do you know why you are here?  Do you know what lessons you have learned and what lessons you still need to learn?  How are you going to make a positive contribution to the world at large?  What are you giving back to society?  Seek to know who you are by knowing your purpose for being.  Embrace the silence and stay focused on your purpose.

Franz Schubert

1875 Oil Painting

of Franz Schubert

by Wilhelm Rieder

"I am in the world only for the purpose of composing."

— Franz Schubert

Austrian Composer

1797 - 1828

Composition of
Franz Schubert

Why are you here?  What is your purpose for being?  What is the legacy you are going to leave behind?  In his short 31 years of life, Franz Schubert composed over 600 songs, 9 symphonies and a large body of chamber and piano music.  What is the legacy you will leave behind?  We all will reach the end of the road one day.  When you look back on your life, what have you accomplished?  What have you achieved?

As creative leaders, we need a sense of purpose — a reason for being.  We need to hold onto something that gives our lives meaning?  Why are you here?  What is your purpose for being? 

Ursula K. LeGuin

Photo by Eileen Gunn

"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."

— Ursula K. LeGuin

American Novelist

1929 -

We all need a sense of purpose, a goal of what we want to accomplish, but we must not lose sight of today and what we are doing.  Stay focused on the current moment while keeping the dream of what you want to accomplish in your mind.  We must enjoy the creative journey because the achievement fades quickly.  When the first novel is written, you need a new goal, a new creative journey.  When the painting is finished, we need to start another.  When the play is over or the film finished, we must find another part to play.  Are you enjoying today or are you dreaming of tomorrow?

Henri Matisse

"Creation is the artist's true function; where there is no creation there is no art."

— Henri Matisse

French Artist

1869 - 1954

Matisse, Woman With A Hat, 1905

Most of us are drawn to the arts because of a need to create something, to express what we are feeling.  Those who stay involved with some art form, such as writing, painting or acting, must also learn technique, but if in the study of techniques we forget creativity, we have lost touch with the purpose of art.  Creativity is the very heart of what we do.  The mastery and perfection of technique must never be more important then the creative impulse.  The art we create must be fresh and new, not boring and repetitious.