John Steinbeck

"Ideas are like rabbits.  You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen."

John Steinbeck

American Novelist

1902 - 1968

Do you ever have too many ideas?  Sometimes when I am writing I am swamped with ideas and sometimes I don't know which ones to choose.  Writing fiction is full of opportunity.  Do you make the main character tall, short or medium height?  Does he have blonde, black or curly hair?  Does he have physical, social or mental disability?  Hundreds of questions.  Thousands of answers.  Sometimes having too many ideas can become a barrier to creating.  Writing fiction requires making choices — choosing a path to follow and not looking back.  The characters take on a life of their own.  

What is the best path to follow?  What are the best choices to make?  Sometimes I have ten ideas, but only two or three are worth keeping.  Don't be afraid of choosing — of following a path to where it takes you.  And keep the ideas coming.  Even bad ideas can lead you somewhere new and inviting.  The good ideas won't appear if there are no bad ideas on which to stand.  Light a candle and watch the ideas grow by leaps and bounds.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

"Picture yourself vividly as winning and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success. Great living starts with a picture, held in your imagination, of what you would like to do or be."







Harry Emerson Fosdick

American Author, Clergy

1878 - 1969







Do you see yourself as a successful writer, successful artist or successful actor?  Success begins in the mind.  If you want to be successful, you need to see yourself as a success.  You need to believe in yourself and your talent.  Another word for it is visualization.  You need to visualize your success.  The mind is very powerful.  You must first see yourself as successful.

Do you ever worry?  Maybe you worry about having enough money to pay the bills.  Or maybe you worry about those you love.  Most people worry at one time or another.  Worry is a negative form of visualization.  Worry is visualization of your deepest fears.

Harness the visual power within your mind to create your success as an artist, a writer and a creative leader.  See yourself writing a novel, painting a picture, or writing a screenplay.

Nicholas Sparks

"When you chase a dream, you learn about yourself.  You learn your capabilities and limitations, and the value of hard work and persistence."

— Nicholas Sparks

American Novelist

1965 - 

Do you have what it takes to chase a dream?  Not everyone is willing to go the distance — to pay the price that success demands.  But whether you succeed or fail, you will gain insight and understanding into yourself.  And maybe what you learn is more important than winning the race.  We all have strengths and weaknesses, capabilities and limitations.  Most people work to improve their weaknesses.  I recommend that you focus on improving your strengths.  You may work for a lifetime to fix your limitations and still not overcome them.  Better to focus your energy on perfecting your strengths.  You don't have as far to travel and the success is more rewarding.

Here is Nicholas Sparks with some tips on writing.

Albert Einstein

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.  Imagination is more important than knowledge.  Knowledge is limited.  Imagination encircles the world."

— Albert Einstein

German Theoretical Physicist

1879 - 1955

Unfortunately, most schools are focused on increasing the knowledge of their students, not their imagination.  And while knowledge is important, imagination is even more important.  There is a limit to how much knowledge we can gain and retain.  The span and accuracy of knowledge is constantly changing and expanding.  What is considered truth today is considered foolish tomorrow.  Once people believed the earth was flat.  We would be much better off if our schools also encouraged imagination.

And the same can be said about creative leaders.  Many artists, writers, actors and musicians study to increase their knowledge of their art.  And this knowledge is good but limited.  We need to be encouraging our imaginations.  We should be exploring the worlds of our imaginations.  What are you doing to increase your imagination?

Catherine Lanigan

"I learned that writers make something out of nothing.  We make dreams into reality.  That's our nature, our mission.  We were born to it.  I will never give up my dream again.  Never." 

— Catherine Lanigan

American Writer

1947 - 

Catherine Lanigan gave up on her dream of writing while in college because a college professor told her she had no talent.  Years later after encouragement from a journalist, she returned to writing. 

We all have people who try to destroy our dreams and it takes courage to stand up to them.  If you are a beginning artist, writer, actor or singer, don't ask if you have talent.  No one can judge that but you.  Ask if you have the passion and persistence to keep creating even when others discourage you.  Ask if you have the heart and the courage to stand up for what you believe in.

Writers and artists make something from nothing.  They take a blank canvas and fill it with color.  They take a blank sheet of paper and fill it with story.  Believe in your dream.  Believe in yourself.  Believe in your creative gift.

George Bernard Shaw

"When I was young I observed that nine out of every ten things I did were failures, so I did ten times more work."

— George Bernard Shaw

Irish Playwright

1856 - 1950

How do you respond when you fail?  Do you give up and quit?  Do you work harder at becoming better?  The difference between winners and losers is that the winners keep going long after the losers have quit.  What failures are holding you back today?  What expectations do you have about success?  When you try to do something new, how many times are you willing to fail before you find success?  Once?  Twice?  Five time?  A hundred times?

Why are we as a society obsessed with success and failure?  Many of us desire fame and fortune and will work hard to achieve it.  And some of us are destroyed when we fail.  We can't stand to fail.  When we reach the end of our lives will our failures and successes matter?  Or will the people we love be more important?

Maria Luz Q. King

Dancer

(2007)

"I have learned that in life nothing is forever, so maybe our dreams are not meant to be forever.  But the memory is forever!  The memories are what we take to heaven."

— Maria Luz Q. King

Mexican-American Artist, Author

1952 - 

Homeless
(2007)

Have you ever let go of your dreams?  I don't mean quit on your dreams.  I don't mean give up on your dreams.  I mean let them go.  Maybe you have outgrown them.  Or maybe you achieved the dream for a short period of time and that was enough.  Maybe our dreams are not meant to be forever.  Nothing in this physical world is permanent.  Nothing lasts forever.  The seasons come and go.  And so do people.  

Are there dreams that you need to let go of?  Are there dreams that are holding you back from success?  Sometimes our fantasies and dreams become barriers that prevent us from becoming whom we need to become.  Are you clinging to some dream that will never happen?  Is it time to let the dream go?

Where do our dreams come from?  Our genes?  Our parents?  Society?  God?  Do we take our dreams with us when we die?  Or do our dreams die with our bodies?  I think our dreams are gifts that provide meaning to our lives.  Our dreams inspire us to do more — to achieve more, to be more.

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.

Ernest Hemingway

"The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity to sacrifice.  Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed."

— Ernest Hemingway

American Novelist

1899 - 1961

As writers, artists and creative leaders we often are vulnerable to the hostile, negative behavior of people who do not understand us and what we represent.  These negative people can be our friends and family initially and the wider world eventually as our creative ideas and works try to find their place in that world.  We need to remain strong and courageous in the face of negative attacks.

As creative leaders we often sacrifice much to achieve our dreams.  We become so focused on and obsessed with our work that we ignore family and friends.  We miss out on the joys of life.  We may forget to take care of our health.  We drink and/or take drugs to kill the demons chasing us.  We suffer ridicule at the hands of those who don't understand us and what we do.

People may hate us when we tell the truth.  Often people are not ready for the truth we have to speak.  They may criticize and condemn us.  They may laugh at us.  We must find the discipline and the courage to speak the truth anyway — to open up and share our thoughts and feelings, to share the beauty we see.

Hemingway At Work

Sydney Smith

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals."

— Sydney Smith

English Writer, Anglican Clergy

1771 -1845

The reason many creative leaders don't reach their goals is that they are focused on the wrong thing.  People focus on all the reasons their feel they can't achieve their goals.  They need to focus instead on their goals. 

If you are focused on your goals, you will see over the obstacles, under the obstacles, around the obstacles and through the obstacles.  If you are focused on the obstacles, you will only see the obstacles and you will not achieve your goals.

What are your goals?  What are you focused on?  The obstacles?  Or the GOALS?  Banish the obstacles from your mind.  Focus on your goals.  Achieve your dreams.

Gloria Steinem

"Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities.  Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning."

— Gloria Steinem

American Journalist, Author

1934 - 

Most of us underestimate the power and importance of dreaming — whether we are talking about day dreaming or sleep dreaming.  Sleep dreaming is one of my favorite times, especially in the twilight world between being awake or being asleep.  Dreams can feel so real and meaningful.  Years ago I kept a dream journal where I would record my dreams.  I have documented proof that I dreamed of marrying my wife a month before I met her.  So I do believe that dreams can predict the future.  I have experienced the excitement of possibilities.  Dreams are small windows into our souls.  

Day dreaming is a way to explore your options and find the right path.  Day dreaming helps creative leaders make decisions and take action.  As Steinem says, day dreaming is a form of planning, a way of preparing for what is to come.  Our minds are very powerful and we can see things our mind's eye before they happen.

Have you ever gone to sleep thinking of some problem and wake up with the answer?  You need to learn to harness the power of your dreams to help you creatively solve problems.  You need to increase your involvement with dreams.  My wife at a very young age discovered that she had the ability to consciously change her dreams.  If she did not like where her dreams were going she would change them while dreaming.  Today we call it lucid dreaming. 

Theodore Roethke

"Being, not doing, is my first joy."

— Theodore Roethke

American Poet

1908 - 1963

 

I must confess that being is very difficult for me.  For years I have been caught up in the culture of doing.  Setting goals and working to achieve my goals.  I find it very difficult to sit and just be.  I must at the very least doodle and who knows maybe my doodles will one day be famous.  We can dream can't we!  If I go on vacation, it often takes me a week to relax and forget my day job.  But I still feel I must be doing something.  Writing.  Drawing.  Producing something.  Rarely can I just be.

How about you?  Are you caught up in the culture of doing or have you learned like Roethke to enjoy just being?

Here is my favorite Theodore Roethke poem.  I love the first three lines.  This is a poem to be read outloud.  Listen to the interaction of sounds.

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.



We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.



Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.



Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me, so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.



This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

Jim Rohn

"Dreams get you started; discipline keeps you going."

— Jim Rohn

American Author / Motivational Speaker

1930 - 2009

We all have dreams and most of us never act on our dreams.  We find excuses and reasons why we can't do something.  We focus on all the obstacles we see in front of us.  Dreams may inspire us to act for a day or two, but it takes discipline to keep writing and painting.  And this goes for successful writers and painters as well as beginners.  I have read stories of successful writers and painters who stop working.  The first book or two made them a celebrity and they never finish the next book.  They get caught up in the celebrity of being a writer.  Being a creative leader requires discipline to sit down at the computer, to stand at that easel, or to sit at the piano.  

Do you have the discipline to accomplish your dreams?  Do you rise before everyone in your family so that you can spend an hour or two working on your art?  Or do you stay up after everyone else has gone to bed?  Do you do what many others only dream about?  Discipline is key to your success.

Jack London

"You can't wait for inspiration.  You have to go after it with a club."

— Jack London

American Novelist

1876 - 1916

If you wait for inspiration, you may never find it.  Inspiration sneaks upon you when you are working and catches you by surprise.  Inspiration invades your dreams and you wake up with the answer to your problems.  When you pretend that inspiration is not important, it dominates your soul.  

Consider inspiration as a friend who comes and goes at all hours of the day and night bearing gifts that will delight you.  When you open the gifts offered by inspiration, be not frightened by what you find.  Cherish the madness that inspiration bestows upon you.  Taste the sadness when it leaves you naked and exposed to the elements.  

Kneel before the altar of inspiration and pray that you will survive the dangerous journey.  Catch fireflies and offer then as a sacrifice to the gods of inspiration.  Dance with the goddess of inspiration and steal her beauty.  Offer a prayer of thanksgiving for an opportunity to taste of the joy of the gods.

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."

Louis Auchincloss

"A man can spend his whole existence never learning the simple lesson that he has only one life and that if he fails to do what he wants with it, nobody really cares."

Louis Auchincloss

American Novelist / Lawyer

1917 - 2010

How often do we hold ourselves back from doing the things we want to do because we are afraid?  Afraid of what others will say?  Afraid of failure?  Afraid of success?  Louis Auchincloss wrote this statement in his first memoir, A Writer's Capital, in 1974.  In his 92 years on this planet, Auchincloss was a lawyer, a novelist, a short-story writer and a historian, publishing more than 60 books.  He filled his life with things he wanted to do.

Is there something you have been dreaming of doing, but have not done it?  Maybe today it is time to take that first step in achieving your dreams because if you don't no one else will care.  Only you care about your dreams.  Only you can achieve your dreams.

Zig Ziglar

"Most people who fail in their dreams fail not from lack of ability but from lack of commitment."

— Zig Ziglar

American Speaker/Author

1926 -

We all have dreams, things that we want to accomplish in our lives, but many of us give up too soon.  We don't have the commitment to achieve what we dream of achieving.  To be an artist in a world where you have to have a 9 - 5 job in order to live requires commitment.  You have to get up earlier than everyone else or go to bed later than everyone else in your family.  You have to steal minutes wherever you can to write, to draw, to paint, to dance.  Sometimes we have to create in isolation, without contact with other creative souls.  We have to force ourselves to write even when our body and mind is finding ways to procrastinate.  Many of us don't have people in our lives encouraging us to create.  In fact, we may have people telling us to get a real job.  We have to be our own coach and cheerleader.  We have to be willing to do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do?  Have you the commitment to be a creative leader?

Natalie Goldberg

"One of the main aims in writing practice is to learn to trust your own mind and body; to grow patient and nonaggressive."

Natalie Goldberg

American Writer/Painter

1948 - 

Do you trust yourself — your mind, your thoughts, your dreams, your desires, your hopes?  Do you trust your body — how you walk, how you dance, the sound of your stomach gurgling, the pain in your left knee?  Many of us don't trust our own instincts.  We put our faith in others.  Maybe it is a parent, a friend, a spouse of even a spiritual leader.  We believe what they say to be true.  We need to learn to listen to that small tiny voice inside us that knows the way.  This voice is the first one we hear before we quickly move on to our more rational voice.  How many times have you felt something to be true in your gut but you have chosen to do what your rational mind said?  Learn to trust yourself and to believe in yourself.

(The source of this quote is the book, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, by Natalie Goldberg.  Every creative leader should read this book multiple times.)

Kahlil Gibran

"In every winter's heart there is a quivering spring, and behind the veil of each night there is a smiling dawn."

— Kahlil Gibran

Lebanese Artist and Poet

1883 - 1931

Hope is an essential gift of living.  Without hope, we are wandering through a dark, desolate world.   In even our worst moments, we need to remember that life will get better.  As artists and writers, we need to believe that the next painting or the next poem will be our best.    If we quit now, we may never know what is around the next corner.  Keep dreaming.  Keep hoping.  Keep believing.