The Element of the Creative Pause and Its Hope for Turning Us into Idea-Generating Machines

Picture Courtesy: EssJay (Flickr)

Each one of us is an ideas machine.

The combination of our experience, our circumstances, all the things we have seen, heard, read and been exposed to, our unique genetic make-up, our education, our knowledge, and our skills, gives us the potential to produce a unique idea.

Actually, to produce an unlimited quantity of unique ideas.

Every advertising creative knows this.

As idea after idea is rejected for the campaign we are working on, we are able to come up with yet another idea; and then yet another idea - until we arrive at the one idea everyone believes will work – the one which will go to print or production.

Every serial inventor or entrepreneur – (Ray Kurzweil, Elon Musk, Reed Hoffman, or any of the other people who have founded multiple companies, or come up with multiple products) knows this.

Once you come up with an idea for a second invention or start a second company, you know you have the power to do it again.

So if each one of us is an idea-generating machine, why do we get stuck and what will get us unstuck?

I thought about this a lot during the 14 years, when I did not and could not write.

My first career was in writing.  After writing a few freelance pieces for the local newspaper, and one or two magazines (this was back in India), I was discovered by a friend of one of my siblings.  She got me my first copywriting job in an ad agency (Thank you Mela).  For the rest of time, I was in India, I was a copywriter, and made a living out of writing for the Indian affiliates of J Walter Thompson, Bozell, and Saatchi and Saatchi. I even set up my own creative shop.

Then I came to the US.  I was not able to break into advertising.  So I took up a sales admin job at Palm, and then, by sheer accident, ended up becoming their Commissions Analyst.

Whether it was the fact of dealing purely with numbers in my new role, or the stress of raising a young child, I stopped writing.

It bothered me. Where had that person gone? I would get an idea for a story or article, and I would pick up a pen. I would write a couple of lines, but the motivation and inspiration would completely dry up.  I would stare at the blank paper hopelessly.

People would say to me, “Minoo, you used to be so good at writing, you really should get back into writing.”  I would nod my head and say “I know,” but inside my head, I would think, “those days are over for me.  Maybe my previous career was just luck.”

And then it happened.

On December 27, 2010, I created a blog on Google Blogger, and published my first post on it.

Why after 14 years of not being able to write, was I suddenly able?

What had happened?

Do you want to guess?

The title of this post gives a clue.

I had been given the accidental gift of a creative pause.

Here’s the story….

I gave up my last full-time employment in June of 2010. I did the Xactly Administrators Course 2 months later, and signed a contract with Solution Partners to join their Xactly Implementation Team. But other than doing an FRD (Functional Requirements Document) for a project which got put on hold, I did not do any other work, and was to remain professionally idle for the next 7 months.

I now realize this idleness was the gift of gifts.

Because the next thing I knew, I had learned to meditate.  Just like that.  I read a book (my post Connected Minds tells the story) and followed the meditation technique from the book. I never looked back.  Meditation became a daily activity in my life, starting from that time.

The next thing I knew, I was blogging. On December 27, 2010, I published my first post 4 Decisions I Wish I Had Made Earlier. Even while writing it, I wondered “Is this a flash in the pan? What if I can’t keep it up?”  It felt awkward and clumsy to write after all that time.  But the impulse was there and I followed it. This time the inspiration didn’t dry up after the first two lines.  And the inspiration didn’t dry up after the first post; or the first few posts; or the first few months; or the first year. Just like with my meditation, I never looked back.  Blogging became a regular activity in my life starting from that time.

From my experience, I can confidently say we are all idea-generating machines.

And the only thing holding us back from being the idea-generating machines we are meant to be, may be a creative pause.

In fact, we may need regular creative pauses.

Because when we are caught up in the humdrum and buzz of routine life, and all its mundane demands, it’s hard to get the idea machine going.

See, ideas are not like horses you can go after with a lasso (John Wayne style).

They are just neurons, firing, and lighting up, and colliding against other neurons in your brain.

And for whatever reason (another wonder of nature), they need you to relax - go fishing, take a walk in the park (Newton), jump into a shower or a bath-tub (Archimedes), open a hymn book in church (Arthur Fry of Post-it Notes fame).

This suggests we should welcome creative pauses in our lives, even intentionally create them.

Want to come up with a new business idea? Go on a nature hike.

Want to write a book? Seclude yourself in a quiet place with nothing but your thoughts.

Want to create something new? Go fishing.

Your thoughts are not to be underestimated.

Thoughts did not let down all the inventors and entrepreneurs and authors and artists through history.

Why would you think they would let you down?

So take a walk.

Go fishing.

Go on a hike.

Become unemployed.

Go to prison.

Get sick.

“Minoo, what are you talking about – become unemployed, go to prison, get sick? Have you gone insane?”

No, I am serious.

Any stretch of completely unstructured time, in which you are alone with your thoughts, can turn on the idea-generating machine.

Remember, it was precisely because I was unemployed, and had oodles of time on my hands, the muse came back. I might never have rediscovered my creativity, were I not twiddling my thumbs for 7 straight months.  It helped that I had an emergency cushion and lived a simple life. If you have an emergency cushion and can live simply, a spell of unemployment can be just the ticket to get your idea-machine going. Let’s not forget J K Rowling was a single mother on welfare when she wrote the first Harry Potter book.

What ideas can be conceived in a prison cell? Anything.  After all, you are alone with your thoughts. Chuck Colson, were he alive, would testify. During his 8 month sentence in a federal prison for his role in the Watergate scandal, he came up with the idea for his nationally famous Prison Ministry.

I also mention getting sick. Does that sound weird?  It is not weird at all. Many famous books and ideas originated in someone’s head when they were on their sick bed.  My post The Gift of Time mentions one such. Interestingly, this post you are reading, was written by me from my sickbed. I had a full blown migraine yesterday and had to take to bed. But as I was lying down, resting off the headache, thoughts would come to me, so I would get up, scribble them down, and fall back into bed. I wrote almost 60% of this post from my sickbed yesterday. Could migraines be a gift from the universe? Hmmm…

I repeat, any stretch of completely unstructured time, in which you are alone with your thoughts, can turn on the idea-generating machine.

So I hope you will welcome these pauses when you get them, and even intentionally create them.

Don’t be anything less than the idea-generating powerhouse you were meant to be.  Begin the process of regular creative pauses and experience the thrill of continuous creation.

Dear Reader – thanks for coming along with me on this journey through the elements of what makes us fully realized human beings. In connection with becoming a fully realized human being, I would like to recommend a book to you called Three Little Steps by Trevor Blake, which for me, was one of the mind-blowing reads of the last decade.  Angela’s Ashes meets Clay Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life? is best I can describe it.  Read it before you go on your first Creative Pause Hike or Walk or Sabbatical or Retreat or Break. Better still, take the book along with you. As always, thanks for reading, and have a great day and week…..M….a Pearl-Seeker like you.

The Element of Different Dimensions and Its Hope for Realizing Our Self Worth

Picture Courtesy - Beach Dance by Fran Hogan

We live life on many different dimensions.

The physical dimension.

The mental dimension.

The professional dimension.

The intellectual dimension.

The emotional dimension.

The spiritual dimension.

Within these dimensions, we live on different dimensions as well.

In the physical dimension, there are our cars, our houses, our bodies, our clothes; what they are and the state they are in, will show the imprint of our priorities

We may have small cluttered apartments (like moi), but regularly exercised bodies.

We may watch a lot of movies but read no books, or vice versa.

We may be into sports; or into politics.

We may have one solid relationship with a spouse or partner; or just many friendships.

I am so glad we live life on many different dimensions.

If it makes prioritizing a challenge, it also gives us hope to shine in different areas.

When I suffered my depression, (My post “If Life Is So Good, Why Do I Feel So Sad?” tells you more), I was doing so well in many different areas -  making money (the high water mark as it turns out), enjoying professional success, working out 7 days a week. I also had a relaxed work schedule in which I was able to include 1 hr. massages twice a week. If I didn’t feel so bad about my depression, it was because I could go on with all these activities regardless. It was very encouraging.

We must not expect when we take a hit –professional, personal, relationship, financial–all hope is lost.  Because we live life on so many different dimensions, there will always be bright spots -areas in our lives where we can continue to realize our self worth.

On the physical dimension - we can look after our health.  Many exercises can be done right where we are – floor exercises, chair exercises. We can learn to meditate so we can control our stress and improve the quality of our sleep.

On the professional dimension – we can read, we can listen to tapes, we can look for opportunities to improve our skills; we can find new avenues to pursue.

On the mental dimension – we can seek advice and follow it.  From therapists, from books, from people we trust.

On the spiritual dimension, we can study the holy books. We can pray.  We can learn to meditate. Meditation can help us release bad thoughts and habits.

When I was at Scios – a job I have referred to in several posts, including The United States of Friendship Part 8 - Julia, it didn’t take me long to figure the job was not going to work out.

The assignment happened when my Mum needed me most at home. I could not telecommute. I spent a great deal of the day away from home because the commute took so long. The work also turned out to be not a good fit. The bits I could do were terribly tedious; the rest was above my skill level – Access rather than Excel based; charts and rate curves, not pivot tables and vlookups. I could not experience what Abraham Maslow calls “the flow” – the ideal state for productivity and peak performance.

During the day, I would receive calls from the different organizations and people involved with Mummy’s care; I would have to step away into a conference room to take these calls, none of which were short, and my boss couldn't help but notice.

While all these strikes were building up against me, I had started attending Toastmasters 3 evenings a month. If I was failing to make an impact at Scios, I was making a huge impact at Toastmasters. I was one of their most promising initiates right from my Icebreaker speech on. I zipped through my 10 speeches and earned my CTM in no time. And I won 2 awards, one of them featured in my post “How I Lost A Thousand Dollars on Donuts”.

My point is no matter what life throws at us, we need to focus on “the things we can do”, rather than “the things we can’t”

There will always be an area, or areas, of our life in which we can thrive and shine.

For some of us, this could be cooking….no matter what goes on in the big bad world out there, as soon as we enter the kitchen, the spotlight is on us, and we are a star……the proof is anything we cook  is gone in a blink.

For some of us, it could be maintaining a beautiful home.  We have an eye for decor and home organization.

For some of us, it could be being in great physical shape.  We run, we work out….we continue to stay in great shape even when life throws us a curve ball.

For some of us, it’s our spiritual strength.  We pray, we focus on spiritual activities; this is what gets us through.

We must never define success too narrowly.

If we do, we may give up on things unnecessarily.

The current Dalai Lama is not a vegetarian. But he is a model Buddhist and a truly wise and noble spiritual leader; Buddhists the world over are glad the Dalai Lama didn’t say, “I am not qualified to be the Dalai Lama - because I am not a vegetarian”

Let me tell you about my own experience with vegetarianism. My desire to be vegetarian was awakened by reading a chapter from a Lewis Carroll book called Sylvie and Bruno.  If you are curious, clicking this link will take you to to the chapter – which is included in my Amazon review of Anita Saran’s book On Becoming A Vegetarian – One Woman’s Experience. But I succeeded at being vegetarian for only 3 years.  Does this mean I consider myself a failure and a lost cause? No.  I am very grateful for the experience. My hope is some day, I will achieve it. For now, I focus on building up my mental, physical, intellectual and spiritual strengths –I know when I do that, I can achieve many things. Vegetarianism may be one of them.

I am glad instead of dwelling on what was happening at Scios, I focused on getting better and better at Toastmasters, and also seeing what I could do to improve my mother’s situation at home without me; I got Meals on Wheels to deliver food twice a day, I enrolled Mum in a Senior Day program, I contacted Catholic Charities to have one of their volunteers come visit her; and Nadya, who is the subject of my post The United States of Friendship – Part - 7 - Nadya took over Mum’s medical appointments, also taking her to lunch or a movie when she could.

None of it was perfect; Mummy disliked being alone at home, she disliked going to the senior day care; she grudgingly went for the lunches; she felt vulnerable and alone at home with her arthritis, her diabetes and all her conditions; but at least I had engaged all the available resources to help her.

We should aim for excellence and do the best we can. Perfection is the enemy of excellence.

We should also focus on our strengths. When there are things we can’t do because we are in a situation where our hands are tied, we should focus on the things we can do. Spend our time doing that.

I have mentioned cooking, and home decor, and staying in shape.

If we put any of these talents to use helping others, our self-worth will be even more improved.

If we are good at cooking, we can help someone that way; if we are good at taxes, we can help someone that way; if we are good at make-up, we can do someone’s make up for them, if we can dance, we can teach someone dancing, if we know Excel, we can teach someone Excel; Teaching, I’ve discovered, is one of the most psychically rewarding things one can do.

One can also set out to learn something new, especially if it could be life-changing. Overcoming any inhibition; kicking any bad habit will be life changing.  It will make us feel like nothing else can. 

In my own life, I discovered the psychic reward of being able to give up anger was priceless.  The psychic rewards of learning to meditate likewise. You can read my posts The Path to Change and Connected Minds for more on that.

Remember, change can happen in a flash; your life can turn positive in a flash; if you think you are getting nowhere in any dimension of your life, focus on the dimensions of your life where you are getting somewhere.

Do what I say to do in my post How to Feel Good About Yourself  When the Chips are Down.

No matter what the challenges, stay with your strengths, while you make small incremental changes on the areas in which you are weak; Even when you make those incremental changes, don’t look for outcomes; just look for additional improvements in effort and be pleased with your progress on that front.

You have so much more to offer the world outside of the area of your life in which you are weak - your talents, your skills, your attitude; the fact you have made something of yourself, and you have gotten this far and are still going.

Just put one foot in front of the other. Focus on the things you can impact and change. Accept the things you can’t. Nothing else matters.

Thanks for reading and have a great day and week…..M……a Pearl Seeker like you.