Life Lesson

Ideas aren’t just behind your computer screen or found in your office.

They’re at the coffee shop that’s finally opened.

They’re with friends at the park.

They’re on the road while you’re driving to get groceries.

They’re in the apartment, just outside the apartment and maybe … if you’re cool enough to have a key, on the roof of the apartment.

They’re hanging out by the capitol square and the water and deep in the park nearby.

When we think we can only come up with ideas in one or two places … well, it’s extremely limiting.

There are ideas all over waiting to be found, waiting for you to be curious enough, waiting for you to see them where they are and stop forcing them to be where you want.

Stay Positive & Being Curious Helps, Moving Around Helps, Too

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Now more than ever, as businesses across the world are reopening, we’re seeing more signage.

Signage about opening. Signage of thanks. Signage of support. Signage of new hours.

Handwritten signs. Signs painted on whatever material was available. Professional signage. Vinyl signage and marker and paint.

So much signage.

Now more than ever, as businesses across the world are reopening, it’s important what happens after the signs work.

The work can’t stop after signage is created. Change and progress and improvements need to be made from the front door and throughout.

It’s not as easy as putting up a sign, but it’s much more worth it.

Stay Positive & Everything Is A Sign

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That’s the recipe for not only a surprise and delight moment, but to make an impact that will be remembered long thereafter.

Do what no one would imagine you doing and then do it with more heart than anyone else.

Note, this recipe doesn’t have to produce a big batch or be a lot of work. It can be subtle. It can be a handwritten letter, a free tasting, a gift.

Actually, it should always feel like a gift, because it is.

Stay Positive & What Can You Unexpectedly Do Today?

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Creativity is all about simplicity.

It’s about how easy or more efficient work can be made. It’s about creating more value for someone with less. It’s about putting in the emotional labor and mental gymnastics with an unwavering destination.

If the goal of the work changes or the target of it does; it’s no longer being creative.

It’s a new project.

The bummer is that new projects often feel easier to complete than working to be more creative.

Creativity is more of an attitude than anything else and it’s on us to push through toward simplicity.

Stay Positive & Use That Coffee For Good

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Two realities ring true.

No one ought to be ashamed or angry when something isn’t for them.

No one ought to be ashamed or angry when they realize that what they are offering isn’t for someone.

Gone are the days that we need to connect with everything and gone are the days that a business needs the masses.

It’s okay to let things go and let people go in order to focus on the core, the tribe, the mission.

Stay Positive & Lose The Crust

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At the end of the day, we have to manufacture our own meaning, our own purpose and existence.

At the end of the day, it’s on us to do the work that fulfills us, the emotional labor, the hard work.

At the end of the day, we need to work toward the change we seek to make and control only which we can control.

At the beginning of the day, too.

Stay Positive & All Day Every Day, Really

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The imagination can truly be stretched. It’s the same as you work any muscle. Push it to the boundaries today and you’ll be able to push it further tomorrow.

The sad part is that there are very few teachers out there who coach or encourage one to truly stretch the imagination.

For kids, it comes naturally. In school, you may have a professor or two that gets you to imagine where wind comes from or what life in Andromeda might look like. And recently, Andy from Headspace encourages folks to imagine sunlight spreading as far out in the world as we can imagine (have you tried to picture what it looks like beyond space?!)

While those are big ideas, it’s worth giving our brain the mental workout of thinking about the little things differently, too.

What are ways we can show empathy that we’ve never shown before?

What can we say to someone to make their entire week, not just day?

What does it look like when we combine loading a dishwasher with the lessons learned from studying architecture?

Stay Positive & Ssssstreeeeetttcchhhhhhh

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