The Swap

For some, finding/making time to work on their art is impractical. The hassle of time management, task management, and people management is too complicated and, in itself, time-consuming. Nearly counterintuitive.

That is why I often suggest that they swap something they do regularly to work on their muse. The reading sessions at night can be put on a halt for a week. Karaoke night, family scrabble, lunch dates; they can all be post-pined for a week or two.

Finding time to work on your art is difficult. Swapping it with one of your weekly (or, hopefully, daily) habits is much easier to do.

Before you know it, you’ll be able to do both.

 

Stay Positive & Time Will Find You

Garth E. Beyer

A Not So Gentle Reminder

Those who care most about you, don’t care whether you ask for their help, assistance, input, opinion, or need. What I know is that you, I, and most people forget that 99% of the time, the people who care about us are more happy to help us than we ever are being helped.

The two most used reasons you never ask for help:

1. You don’t want to be looked down upon by possibly asking too much.

2. You forget that there are people all around you caring, willing to help.

To the first, realize that you would only ever ask something from someone who cares about you. No one asks someone who doesn’t care about them for something. (If they do, it always goes ignored. The same result as not asking at all.) Then think of all the people that care about you. Don’t measure it. Don’t categorize them by the degree in which they care about you. Don’t group them into those who really care about you because they are family or who don’t care too much because they are just friends. No. The miraculous light that rarely gets shined on the idea of asking for help from those who care about you is that no matter how much they care, they will all be willing to do the same thing for you. Yes, it may take a bit more persuasion and communication of the benefit, but they always will. I could ask my friend that I haven’t seen in years to loan me a grand to fix up my car or I could ask my close uncle. Same result.

To the second: now is when the not so gentle reminder comes in. If you forget that there are people all around you that care about you, it’s not their fault for not showing it. No. It’s your fault for not making it so that they are happy to show they care. It’s your fault for not making them feel good about caring about you. This is where the give-and-take of the world originates. If I ask my friend, who cares about me, to loan me a grand to fix up my car, and I blow $800 at a casino, do you think my friend is going to boast about helping me when I blew most of the money away?

To ask for help is to not only tell yourself, but the person who is helping you too, that you will make them happy that they helped, happy that they cared, and happy that it was all worth it.

The most interesting aspect to asking for help is that it’s one of the strongest paths to growth. Asking for help is far from selfish because in order to reap the benefits, you have to think of yourself and the person helping you. And when you do that, it creates a ripple effect around both of you.

 

Stay Positive & Test It For Yourself, Find Who You Can Help

Garth E. Beyer

Self-Destruction And The Need For It

Unlike most reality shows, Destroy Build Destroy actually sets an extremely positive theme and lesson for those with an open enough mind to see it: monumental creations can be constructed out of the destruction of almost any object.

Take a look at another example: tattooing.

Tattooing, which is a marvelous form of art – yet at the same time, mutilation – is also creation through destruction. The act of being tattooed is destroying your body, your skin. It involves pain, changing an original form, and there is blood (plenty of it) as proof. Yet, after being tattooed, something artistically intrinsic has been printed on your body. Creation through destruction.

We must pay a price for something to be created through destruction. At times it is money, other times it is emotions, personal attachments, relationships, or claimed sentimental objects.

The concept of creation through destruction is clear. If your mind is still open to this theme, can you imagine a way that the destruction of your self could lead to a creation of something greater?

If this concept can be applied to absolutely any object in the world, why wouldn’t it also apply to us, as humans, as people, as moving, being, emotionally thinking living beings.

Can we be destroyed? Yes. But, can we self-destruct? We’re actually pretty good at it.

The real trouble is making it so our self-destruction leads to creation. Most of the time our self-destruction is just that. We will beat ourselves down, criticize our own work, tell ourselves we are not good enough. We will easily toss out our own work, quickly choose someone else before we choose ourselves, we will consciously toss our time away to unproductive matters.

The destroy part, we have that down pat. The creation part though, can use some work. As humans, metaphorically speaking, when our heads get chopped off – or when we chop them off ourselves – we have the ability to grow two back. That involves creation. That involves different perspectives, an open mind, and an incessant need to learn from our mistakes and everything around us.

Contrary to belief, the world is pretty easy on us, especially if we comply, follow orders, and never make a rumpus. In fact, it’s a smooth operation as long as we don’t try to change anything. It’s for this reason that self-destruction is a necessary process for creation, for art, for growth, and most importantly, for experience.

We can let the destruction of our selves ruin us, or we can create something remarkable from it.

 

Stay Positive & Become Part Of The Tribe Of Fireweeds

Garth E. Beyer

For those who don’t know, fireweeds mainly grow only after a forest fire.

The Finish Line

What I love about runners, racecar drivers, swimmers, and any racer in general is that when they reach the finish line, they don’t stop. They zoom through it and then start to slow down.

Taking a finish line literally, it means you finish at the line, as in, you stop on the line. Why go past it if it’s the finish line? Taking it literally would mean that you need to slow down before you get to the finish line so you can stop on it.

In reality, that’s actually what a lot of people do. The closer they get to their goal, the slower they get. They want their step on the finish line to be perfect. Plenty of times over, the fear of success, the fear of it not being perfect, stops them from making it to the finish line. Once near it, they take a couple of steps back just to make sure they are doing everything right.

Don’t.

Find out where the finish line is drawn and run past it.

You don’t need to be a racer to live the concept of a finish line. Have a goal? Blow past it, slow down, and then evaluate. You will learn, adapt, and grow much quicker than if you stop before you finish just to evaluate something you havn’t completed.

 

Stay Positive & Let’s Race To Our Goals This Year (and by to, I mean past)

Garth E. Beyer

Going After Growth

Going After Growth

Plants are better than us. They grow taller, they accrue width, they are in the sunlight more than us, they stand stronger and admit it, when they lose a leaf or a branch they grow it back quicker too. Actually, I once wrote a haiku that went like this,

If A Tree Stays Standing in the Forest, And No One Is Around to Hear It

they sway in the wind

never break from much pressure

we must stand like trees

Trees or plants in general go after growth. They don’t wait for the sun to shine on them, or for it to rain, or for something to be thrown near it to feed off its nutrients. It goes after it!

The plant spawns its roots as far as it can to get as much carbon dioxide and nutrients as possible. It extends its leaves as far out as possible. It builds itself to acclimate, whether that means growing a thick strong stem that nothing can bring down or one that sways with the wind.

 

It’s in their genes, their programming, their ancestry – it’s what plants do.                                                                                            Us on the other hand, were given a tragic gift.

We can choose to live like a plant or not. And that choice makes all the difference.

 

So let me ask you, are you a Bonsai Tree or a General Sherman?

 

Stay Positive & Unlike Plants, You Have The Ability To Grow ANY Direction You Want

Garth E. Beyer