Justine Musk's Blog, page 33

"well-behaved women seldom make history": redefining what it means to be bad

I posed topless for a female photographer who specializes in boudoir. I'm lying on the bed in a man's velvet smoking jacket, hair blown across my face. I look at the camera. It's a beautiful portrait (the photographer is very talented) and I'm proud of it. It reminds me slightly of Manet's Olympia. That painting caused a scandal at the time (1863) — not because the subject was nude — but because of how she stares at the viewer instead of looking away demurely.

It's that act of shameless eye contact that makes her – according to the moral dictates of the era — truly "bad".

I once said to someone, "I don't know if I'm a good girl with a bad streak, or a bad girl with a good streak." But I was being ironic. My real point was that, like any other woman (or man), I am both and neither.

In fact, it's kind of amazing to me that the good girl/bad girl dichotomy still exists. It came up again when movie star Reese Witherspoon accepted an award on television and took her speech as an opportunity to slam other, younger women for being "bad".

"I understand that it's cool to be bad, I get it," she said, in that tone of false camaraderie women sometimes use before they slip in the knife. "But it's possible to make it in Hollywood without being on a reality show….And when I was coming up, a sex tape was something you hid under your bed…And when you take naked pictures of yourself, you hide your face! Hide your face!" She finished off by declaring that she was going to try to make it "cool" to be a "good girl".

But imagine this:

Instead of criticizing the same young women for the same things that everybody else is already criticizing them for, she could have slammed reality shows for their misogynist (and monotonous) depiction of women.

She could have criticized the kind of media that turns a girl like Paris Hilton into a celebrity in the first place.

She could have pointed out how advertising – which is so very everywhere that we no longer notice it as we're breathing it in – co-opts rebellion and sells it back to girls in the "you've come a long way, baby" pseudo-liberation supposedly found in a package of cigarettes.

She could have criticized a culture that trains girls to define themselves by their sexual appeal only to punish them for it.

She could have echoed Laurel Ulrich's famous comment that "well-behaved women seldom make history" and pointed out that 'bad' doesn't have to mean shallow and self-destructive. It can mean cutting against the traditional good-girl dictates of passive and pretty and pleasing and quiet. It can mean speaking up against the status quo, the double standard, the beauty myth. It can mean rejecting the idea that your moral nature depends not on what you do, but on what you don't do (have sex).

It can mean revolution not rebellion.

She could have said: If you're going to be 'bad', make it MEAN SOMETHING…other than self-sabotage.

Recently I was struck by two different dialogues on Facebook. One was about Charlie Sheen. The other was about Britney Spears. A man posted a status update about going to Sheen's show, and the thread discussed how smart and funny and talented Sheen is and that despite the controversy and general hubbub, "he's fine, he's okay" and "a brilliant marketer" and "totally knows what he's doing".

Meanwhile, I'd posted a link to a Britney Spears video on my own Facebook page, partly because I'm fascinated by the way people react to her.

Britney immediately came under fire for being "a poor role model" to young girls everywhere.

No "brilliant marketer" comments for her.

Both Sheen and Spears have a noted history of drug use. Both are sexy and openly sexual. Both are, or have been, at the top of their professions. Both have undergone episodes of bizarre, even tragic behavior that is suggestive of addiction and mental illness.

Yet in the buzz around Charlie Sheen at the height of his notoriety, what I didn't hear was anything about how he serves as a poor role model for boys.

This is interesting to me, because – unlike Britney, at least to my knowledge – Sheen has a documented history of domestic abuse.

As in: he hits women.

As in: he once shot a woman in the arm.

Let me repeat that: he freaking shot the woman.



But this is no big deal. It gets glossed over. Whenever I brought it up – in person or online – people would lift their virtual shoulders in a virtual shrug and move on.

(Possibly because the women involved were so easily characterized as 'bad' girls.

Which in the end comes down to this: slut.

Which means: vile and disposable.)



In comparison to Sheen, Britney did reveal her belly button at a young age.

And that, of course, is a threat to civilization as we know it.

Spears is held up as a "poor role model" because we can perceive her as trashy and slutty and "asking for it". Once you reduce a girl to her sexuality – and god knows that never ever happens in this culture – she becomes less than human, so you no longer have to treat her as a human. Which means the Charlie Sheens of the world – rich, powerful, white – can do with them as they please. If the girls get, you know, a little bit shot — well, it's their own damn fault. That's the message that some boys are absorbing from Sheen's treatment of women and our celebration of him. That attitude, I suspect, will prove more dangerous to girls than any of Britney's outfits or dance moves or little-girl singing voice.

There's some irony in the fact that, like Britney, Reese Witherspoon got pregnant at a young age – but unlike Britney, who was married, Reese conceived out of wedlock and had a shotgun wedding.

Also, she said "motherfucker" on stage.

Also, she is still young — and divorced.

Also, she's an actress (which used to be synonymous with prostitute).

Not so long ago, these things would have pegged her as morally defective. She wouldn't technically qualify as a "good girl" (which means she's probably "cooler" than she gives herself credit for).

But what Witherspoon seemed to be getting at in her declaration of herself as a "good girl" has to do with the idea of exposure. Whether it's a reality TV show or an unfortunate cell phone picture, a good girl does not show herself to the world in this way — or if she does, she "hides her face".

She guards her shame.

She never makes eye contact.

A "good" girl is not only virginal – and thus qualifies as morally sound, even if, like Jessica Wakefield in the Sweet Valley High novels, she's kind of a sociopath – but modest and quiet. She covers up. She is seen – without being seen. She talks in a nice voice and smiles a lot. She's the angel of the house, and stays in the house, which was the historical point of this exercise in the first place.

She's not loud or opinionated, she doesn't rock the boat, and she doesn't draw attention to herself.

All of this is convenient for others. The funny thing about silence is how it tends to favor the dominating person or group. The dominating narrative, the ruling point of view, becomes a sort of truth by default: what we as a culture assume when we're given no reason to assume otherwise.

It's the winners who get to write history, after all. The others are silent or silenced.

Which is not my way of saying that appearing on reality TV isn't a form of evil in its own right, or that a girl should take provocative pictures of herself and post them on the 'Net. Neither is power so much as a mistaken idea about power (and perhaps too many shots of tequila): when the culture seems to be urging you in one direction ("it's cool to be 'bad'") and you haven't had time or experience to learn otherwise.

But there does seem to be a link between sexual expression and self-expression, in that a 'good' girl is not in full possession of either. Her body doesn't belong to her: it 'belongs' to her father, to her future husband, to the government that decides if she can have an abortion or the religion that decides if she can use birth control.

Her voice doesn't fully belong to her either: she has to be careful what she says, and how she says it, and who she might offend.

'Goodness', then, seems to involve an amputation of the self. You make yourself 'good' to be loved and accepted, and in the process sacrifice your authenticity. You give yourself away until you no longer know who you are – assuming you ever did.

I'm not sure what you actually get for this, in the end.

Fitting in, as the wonderful Brene Brown so astutely points out, is not the same as being accepted for who you are – in fact, the one renders the other impossible. Being trained to please and serve leaves you ripe for exploitation; the inability to assert your boundaries makes you easy to abuse in large and small ways.

"Raising a girl to be 'nice'," a therapist – a woman in her sixties, married and with daughters — once remarked to me, "is like sending her out into the world with one hand tied behind her back." She should know. Many of these women turn up in her Beverly Hills office twenty years later: divorced, discarded, aging, with no ability to support themselves and no sense of who they are at core.

So honestly, in the year 2011, these are a girl's options? She can be 'bad' (and disposable) or 'good' (and turned in on herself)?

I would like to think that there's another option.

Not 'bad', maybe, but badass.

As in: you get to declare yourself. You get to express your sexuality any way you choose, whether it's indulging or abstaining, and you're responsible about it and willing to risk the emotional consequences. When you want or need to speak up — you speak up. You write or blog or paint or dance or study or put on puppet shows or raise your kids or start up your own company or nonprofit or do some combination thereof. You stand for what you believe in. You know what you believe in – and what you don't. You own your life. You find your tribe. You look out for yourself (ie: you are 'selfish'). And when you offend people, as anyone with an opinion is bound to do at some point — when people step into your space just to tell you that you suck — you shrug it off and move on, because you know disapproval won't kill you.

You nurture the fire at your core.

I'm reading the book GAME FRAME, about the rise of social gaming, and came across the idea of "the magic circle". The circle is the arena in which the game takes place. You step over some kind of threshold and into another world. You participate in a conflict that you recognize as artificial but, for a space of time, accept as reality. You willingly suspend your disbelief.

It struck me that we move in and out of different kinds of magic circles. There are games, yes, but also movies and theater and television and books. There are relationships that become their own world of intimacy. They form a private reality between you and your partner, in which you might ignore your actual experience to buy into an entrancement ("we are soulmates") or belief system ("he is better and always right, and I am lesser and always wrong").

And then there's a magic circle that has to do with language and perception, with how we create our shared reality. The good girl/bad girl labeling strikes me as one of those. Instead of recognizing a woman as a complex and multi-dimensional being, instead of allowing her the flaws, mistakes and happy accidents that come with the trial-and-error process known as the human condition, we stomp her into a cartoon. We accept an artificial conflict (good girl vs bad girl) and make it important. We place her on a pedestal or in the dirt (or on the pedestal so we can knock her off later). We accept this as real instead of a game we can choose not to play.

You could say, instead: We're all doing the best we can. We all do stupid things from time to time. But we won't be distracted by this game of blaming and shaming each other. We'll look to larger forces.

I like this video by Jeffrey Wright, in which he transfers the "willing suspension of disbelief" from the theater to the developing world, from acting to entrepreneurialism and social change.

With the power of your convictions, he says, with the ability to suspend your disbelief and act in the face of uncertainty, you have the chance to reshape reality.

Like Olympia staring out at the viewer — like Manet breaking the rules to paint her — you can reject the game and make a new one.

You can invent a new truth.

Olympia has come down to us through the ages. She refuses to "hide her face". She is shamelessly comfortable in her own skin. She exudes a badass presence.

Her critics, now, are dust.

why perfectionism is so totally overrated

I was at a week-long writer's retreat at a villa in St Tropez. We played two truths and a lie. The point was to speak and go deep.

Some of us might or might not have said things like:

My friend knows that I slept with her husband.

I've been in prison twice.

I've been lonely my whole life.

I feel secretly responsible for the death of my child.

My English teacher seduced me when I was sixteen.

The point was to create an atmosphere of intimacy and trust that would allow us to pack as much progress as we could in the time that we had together.

If we couldn't share work that was still in the vulnerable early stages, or tell each other the truth (in a constructive manner), or go deep in the timed writing exercises, we would waste time and money.

We were in a working relationship with each other. And the foundation of any relationship, as Dr Phil would probably tell you, is trust.

We live in a culture that trumpets this idea of fierce individualism, and yet in so many ways we depend on each other to move up and move forward. I saw this at the villa. Improving as a writer is a creative and collaborative process: it depends on experimentation, risk, trial and error, constructive feedback, a growing sense of what works and what doesn't and why (or why not).

But first, you have to put yourself out there in your imperfect glory

your deep and fucked-up beauty

both in what you reveal and how you reveal it.

This makes me think of the advice Seth Rose gave an audience of aspiring entrepreneurs several years ago. Just make a version of the technology and get it out there, he said. Don't waste time trying to make it perfect. You need to see how the user responds to it. Chances are they'll use it in ways you never predicted, while ignoring the functions you considered important.

Then you can evolve the product according to what the user needs and wants, instead of what you think the user needs and wants.

In what strikes me as a similar way, your blog, your 'voice', your personal brand, evolves through an ongoing interaction with the people formerly known as your audience. You put yourself out there, you collect feedback, you develop a sense for what works and where your interests and your audience's interests align (a.k.a. the 'sweetspot'). You evolve through trial and error, variation and selection, in response to a rapidly changing world.

You try out different things, discard the failures and repeat the successes – and then repeat – and then repeat.

But you have to be willing to fail. To make mistakes. Often in public.

(The trick is to make sure that they're survivable mistakes and failures – what Peter Sims refers to in his book as "little bets".)

If you struggle with perfectionism, this can be a problem.

We need to trust our own ability to tolerate risk, uncertainty and repeated failures. We need to trust that the world will not annihilate us for having the audacity to reveal ourselves as a continuing work-in-progress.

Creativity calls for trust. This blog post makes the connection between creativity, trust and play (an important element of being creative).

Play gets people comfortable and relaxed with one another. When we play we lose our tendency toward conservative thinking. We take more chances. We muster up the courage to share our most outrageous thinking. Fear dissipates; better ideas materialize.

When people are trusting, they are more likely to speak their minds and float their ideas, no matter how crazy or half-baked they fear those ideas to be.

I'll repeat that: people are more likely to speak their minds.

The fear of failure, of looking and being imperfect, traps us inside ourselves, in a silent place where nothing grows. It cuts us off from the energy of the world.

When you share your work, float your ideas, speak your mind, you are in direct engagement with the world. The creative act is an expansive act. In contrast, perfectionism is about isolation, shame, stagnation. You hide behind an image, an idea, a dream of perfection that serves neither the world nor yourself.

To be creative, we have to trust in the process.

We have to trust in ourselves.

Which means we have to accept ourselves. If you're constantly judging and criticizing and dismissing your ideas, your voice will never find the space it needs to speak.

Subscribe to my list in that ink-blot-butterfly box overhead.

the art of evolving your inner creative badass

I was at a week-long writer's retreat at a villa in St Tropez. We played two truths and a lie. The point was to speak and go deep.

Some of us might or might not have said things like:

My friend knows that I slept with her husband.

I've been in prison twice.

I've been lonely my whole life.

I feel secretly responsible for the death of my child.

My English teacher seduced me when I was sixteen.

The point was to create an atmosphere of intimacy and trust that would allow us to pack as much progress as we could in the time that we had together.

If we couldn't share work that was still in the vulnerable early stages, or tell each other the truth (in a constructive manner), or go deep in the timed writing exercises, we would waste time and money.

It was our job to help each other get better. We were in a working relationship with each other. And the foundation of any relationship, as Dr Phil would probably tell you, is trust.

We live in a culture that trumpets this idea of fierce individualism, and yet in so many ways we depend on each other to move up and move forward. I saw this at the villa. Improving as a writer is a creative and collaborative process: it depends on experimentation, risk, trial and error, constructive feedback, a growing sense of what works and what doesn't and why (or why not).

But first, you have to put yourself out there in your imperfect glory

your deep and fucked-up beauty

both in what you reveal and how you reveal it.

This makes me think of the advice Seth Rose gave an audience of aspiring entrepreneurs several years ago. Just make a version of the technology and get it out there, he said. Don't waste time trying to make it perfect. You need to see how the user responds to it. Chances are they'll use it in ways you never predicted, while ignoring the functions you considered important.

Then you can evolve the product according to what the user needs and wants, instead of what you think the user needs and wants.

In what strikes me as a similar way, your blog, your 'voice', your personal brand, evolves through an ongoing interaction with the people formerly known as your audience. You put yourself out there, you collect feedback, you develop a sense for what works and where your interests and your audience's interests align (a.k.a. the 'sweetspot'). You evolve through an ongoing process of trial and error, variation and selection, in response to a rapidly changing world.

You try out different things, discard the failures and repeat the successes – and then repeat – and then repeat.

But you have to be willing to fail. To make mistakes. Often in public.

(The trick is to make sure that they're survivable mistakes and failures – what Peter Sims refers to in his book as "little bets".)

If you struggle with perfectionism, this can be a problem.

We need to trust our own ability to tolerate risk, uncertainty and repeated failures. We need to trust that the world will not annihilate us for having the audacity to reveal ourselves as a continuing work-in-progress.

Creativity calls for trust. This blog post makes the connection between creativity, trust and play (an important element of being creative).

Play gets people comfortable and relaxed with one another. When we play we lose our tendency toward conservative thinking. We take more chances. We muster up the courage to share our most outrageous thinking. Fear dissipates; better ideas materialize.

When people are trusting, they are more likely to speak their minds and float their ideas, no matter how crazy or half-baked they fear those ideas to be.

I'll repeat that: people are more likely to speak their minds.

The fear of failure, of looking and being imperfect, traps us inside ourselves, in a silent place where nothing grows. It cuts us off from the energy of the world.

When you share your work, float your ideas, speak your mind, you are in direct engagement with the world. The creative act is an expansive act. In contrast, perfectionism is about isolation, shame, stagnation. You hide behind an image, an idea, a dream of perfection that serves neither the world nor yourself.

To be creative, we have to trust in the process.

We have to trust in ourselves.

Which means we have to accept ourselves. If you're constantly judging and criticizing and dismissing your ideas, your voice will never find the space it needs to speak.

Subscribe to my list in that ink-blot-butterfly box overhead.

how your mistakes + failures point the way to your success

I was in an apartment in downtown Manhattan talking to a friend about a chunk of my life I felt I'd lost to an unhealthy relationship. I could have done so much more, I said, if I hadn't allowed myself to get so sidetracked, my self-esteem yanked inside out until I didn't think I could do much of anything.

She mentioned that regret is nothing but an energy drain.

Duly noted.

She pointed out how much deeper my relationships are now because of everything I've been forced to learn about myself and my fear of intimacy and my attraction to difficult situations. If anything, she said, I am likely to become an expert on authentic, loving, nurturing relationships, not in spite of but because of my spotty history with them.

This is the flip side, the gift side, of our vulnerability.

I have a close relative who dealt with his traumatic childhood by becoming a psychologist.

In my years of working out, I couldn't help but notice how many personal trainers were recovering from body image issues and eating disorders.

And I've always been kind of fascinated by novelist Dennis Lehane's admission that he decided to write mysteries in order to learn about plot. At the time, he was a talented MFA student who wrote literary short stories…and couldn't plot to save his life. Now he writes some of the most gripping fiction out there: critically acclaimed, on bestselling lists, turned into movies by Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood.

Odd, how the things that make us vulnerable are the things that can make us so strong. Our mistakes and failures point the way to our success. They expose — if we're willing to look — the blind spots in our understanding. They show us where we need to go, and what we need to learn, and who we need to partner with or mentor under in order to become what we need to be.

And if you know anything about deliberate practice, you know that the fastest way to learn is through making mistakes. Mistakes force the brain to slow down, to evaluate things, to pay sharp attention and truly think its way forward (instead of shifting into automatic pilot). When you're pushing the edges of your abilities, you lay down new neural pathways that pave the way to greater learning and deeper accomplishment. It's not easy….but it's damn effective, and ten thousand hours (minimum) of deliberate practice seems to be what separates the good from the great.

So if we learn this much from our mistakes, why do we get so afraid to make them? Or admit them?

What is the price that we pay?

Fail. Forward. Fast. ("Reward Excellent Failures, Punish

Mediocre Successes.")

–Tom Peters

"Fail often to succeed sooner."

– IDEO company slogan

why you can free yourself from pointless people-pleasing

Not everybody has to like you.

Only your Right People need to like you.

When we think in terms of audience, going for a few of the people instead of all of the people seems counter-intuitive. Our instinct is to make ourselves as broad-ranging as possible, so that there's a bit of our fabulousness for everyone.

This doesn't work.

Think about how networks work.

We like to cluster. What's more, we tend to cluster with people similar to us, with similar interests. If someone in a cluster falls in love with your blog, for example, chances are good she'll pass it on to person B. Who might pass it on to persons C and D.

And so on — until you're widely known throughout that cluster and spreading out to another, connected cluster, where word of mouth continues to do its magic.

But if your blog is all over the place, it won't have a chance to sink through any one cluster because it's too busy appealing to different clusters. So by the time person B or person C checks it out, your blog doesn't seem relevant to them — which means they lose interest. The buzz stops and keels over dead.

Not to mention that if your message — your voice — is that inconsistent or compromised or watered-down to begin with, you're unlikely to get anybody talking about you at all.

One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever got was this: picture your Ideal Reader in your head and write directly and intimately to that reader. Instead of reaching for the masses you're reaching for the heart and soul of that one reader. You make her feel recognized

(and recognition is a gift)

by saying what she can't, or didn't know she wanted to say. When you resonate like that, you make a powerful connection — and a fan, maybe even a True Fan, who gets excited enough to share you with others.

Because she is one of your Right People.

You know those people: they're the ones you groove with, and spark with, and feel both electric and comfortable with. You've known each other for all of ten minutes when it feels like you've known each other forever.

So much of the quality of our lives (not to mention our creative careers) depends upon Right People.

They might or might not be the groups of people we were born into, and who populated the schools and neighborhoods of our childhoods.

When they're not, we're forced to navigate difficult territory.

The groups we're in exert a powerful influence on us. We shape ourselves to fit in, to belong. Our groups reflect back to us a sense of who we are. If they are Wrong People — especially if they're so wrong that they're emotionally and verbally abusive — they throw back distorted images that take our flaws and magnify them until we think that is all we are.

When we're with Wrong People, we lop off parts of ourselves and contort ourselves to fit some kind of definition of what we think we need to be in order to win love

(what we assume to be love)

and approval.

Eventually we might realize that instead of suffering this way, we can go exploring for our Right People: the people who light us up and draw out our strengths and make us better, happier versions of ourselves.

As a creator, you call your Right People to you by working as close to your soul as you can.

There's a point, I think, where your own needs merge with the needs of your Right People, so that by writing for yourself you are writing for them, and vice-versa.

When you write for yourself, you stay passionate and engaged with your material, you push boundaries and take risks and break new ground; when you write for others, you stay connected and relevant to the world outside your own head. You don't get lost in your journey. You make it meaningful for others.

By keeping your voice pure and true, you can send it out across the Internet and be somebody's Right Person. You might even deliver a message that she needs to hear — because maybe you're the only Right Person at that particular point in time, who can in some way tell her:

You are not lost, no matter what they say. You are wandering and exploring, which is as it should be. You will find your tribe. You will find your way home.

Hello! If you liked the article, please subscribe in that box up in the corner.

the power of your personal elite + one of the best pieces of creative advice I ever got

Not everybody has to like you.

Only your Right People need to like you.

When we think in terms of audience, going for a few of the people instead of all of the people seems counter-intuitive. Our instinct is to make ourselves as broad-ranging as possible, so that there's a bit of our fabulousness for everyone.

This doesn't work.

Think about how networks work.

We like to cluster. What's more, we tend to cluster with people similar to us, with similar interests. If someone in a cluster falls in love with your blog, for example, chances are good she'll pass it on to person B. Who might pass it on to persons C and D.

And so on — until you're widely known throughout that cluster and spreading out to another, connected cluster, where word of mouth continues to do its magic.

But if your blog is all over the place, it won't have a chance to sink through any one cluster because it's too busy appealing to different clusters. So by the time person B or person C checks it out, your blog doesn't seem relevant to them — which means they lose interest. The buzz stops and keels over dead.

Not to mention that if your message — your voice — is that inconsistent or compromised or watered-down to begin with, you're unlikely to get anybody talking about you at all.

One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever got was this: picture your Ideal Reader in your head and write directly and intimately to that reader. Instead of reaching for the masses you're reaching for the heart and soul of that one reader. You make her feel recognized

(and recognition is a gift)

by saying what she can't, or didn't know she wanted to say. When you resonate like that, you make a powerful connection — and a fan, maybe even a True Fan, who gets excited enough to share you with others.

Because she is one of your Right People.

You know those people: they're the ones you groove with, and spark with, and feel both electric and comfortable with. You've known each other for all of ten minutes when it feels like you've known each other forever.

So much of the quality of our lives (not to mention our creative careers) depends upon Right People.

They might or might not be the groups of people we were born into, and who populated the schools and neighborhoods of our childhoods.

When they're not, we're forced to navigate difficult territory.

The groups we're in exert a powerful influence on us. We shape ourselves to fit in, to belong. Our groups reflect back to us a sense of who we are. If they are Wrong People — especially if they're so wrong that they're emotionally and verbally abusive — they throw back distorted images that take our flaws and magnify them until we think that is all we are.

When we're with Wrong People, we lop off parts of ourselves and contort ourselves to fit some kind of definition of what we think we need to be in order to win love

(what we assume to be love)

and approval.

Eventually we might realize that instead of suffering this way, we can go exploring for our Right People: the people who light us up and draw out our strengths and make us better, happier versions of ourselves.

As a creator, you call your Right People to you by working as close to your soul as you can.

There's a point, I think, where your own needs merge with the needs of your Right People, so that by writing for yourself you are writing for them, and vice-versa.

When you write for yourself, you stay passionate and engaged with your material, you push boundaries and take risks and break new ground; when you write for others, you stay connected and relevant to the world outside your own head. You don't get lost in your journey. You make it meaningful for others.

By keeping your voice pure and true, you can send it out across the Internet and be somebody's Right Person. You might even deliver a message that she needs to hear — because maybe you're the only Right Person at that particular point in time, who can in some way tell her:

You are not lost, no matter what they say. You are wandering and exploring, which is as it should be. You will find your tribe. You will find your way home.

how to use the power of Twitter to develop and promote your zone of genius

"…I have found that every experience is a form of exploration." - Ansel Adams

I first discovered Twitter through an early adopter tech friend when Twitter was still a wee young thing. I remember sitting cross-legged on my bed with my tweetstream on my laptop screen when my husband-at-the-time said, "What is that?"

I explained.

He snorted and said, "That's inane."

He's not the only one who thought that.

But now, when a creative friend tells me she doesn't use Twitter, or she "kind of" uses Twitter, it pains me. A major part of the creative process is bringing your work to the world, and the great thing about the Internet is that it enables your "platform" to grow naturally along with your work, as an extension of your work.

You promote your work – and yourself – through promoting your zone of ideas.

People who scorn Twitter think it's about tweeting stupid trivial personal shit. It's true that some people do this and amass huge followings. We call them 'celebrities'.

(A friend of mine was telling me about her partner, who happens to be one.

"She has about thirty people who reply to everything she tweets. She can tweet, 'I sneezed', and these people will be like, 'Oh, you sneezed! You're so adorable when you sneeze!'"

Her partner said darkly, "She's not wrong.")

Celebrities live in a bizarre and distorted world and as a general rule it is best not to do what they do.

Because Twitter is largely about content curation. As more and more crap fills the Web, your people need you to dig out the good stuff and present it to them with a tweet and a link.

You might say, "But Justine. I have no time for such things."

Except you're doing it anyway. As a creative person you have an intense curiosity about the world and a driving desire to find and make meaning. You have your passions, your interests, your obsessions: these are the things that surface in your work, over and over again.

These are also the things that draw your 'right people' to you. You can find that place where your passion and purpose align with your audience, and use those shared interests as points of connection.

(And if you're discovering your passions and working out your purpose, you can share that with your audience through linking to articles about passion and purpose. It's not like you're alone in this.)

We're human. We're social animals. We like to connect with each other, but we don't like people who trap us in the corner and regale us with stories about how great they are and why we should totally buy their work.

So Hugh MacLeod talks about 'social objects': those objects or experiences that stir up conversation and give us reasons and excuses to reach out to one another.

You can use links to interesting content as social objects. You collect links in your tweetstream the way you might, say, collect art to hang in your house. Just like my art collection would make a statement about who I am, your links collection makes a statement about who you are. It shows rather than tells.

It also makes use of guilt by association. After all, you are what you tweet, what you share, what you link to. If you consistently link to high-quality stuff in one or two chosen topics, I start to think that you have some high-quality authority in those topics. I become intrigued enough to check you out and click through to your blog.

I also make you part of my trusted networks – my Facebook news streams, my Twitter lists – that bubble up the kind of information that I'm looking for so I don't have to search for it myself.

You become a familiar name and a trusted resource.

Angela Dunn refers to this as being a "thought leader DJ". You identify the crowd that you're playing to and make sure they have a good time. You serve up a lot of this and a little of that. Over time, you develop a reputation for having a certain kind of style. People know you through the 'music' you play.

Of course, such a process demands that you explore your interests. You must become well-read and on the cutting edge. You must learn shit. You must steep yourself in a rich and varied stew of influences that will only deepen your work. You must expose yourself to ideas – lots and lots of ideas. Some of these ideas will break apart and find each other and assemble themselves into new ideas – your ideas. So you will not only be more informed than the average person…you will be more creative and original.

And so:

Decide what topics you want to specialize in, what you want to become 'known' for, that relate to you and your work, and will pull in people who are likely to resonate with you and your work.

Although the truth is, this isn't really something you get to 'decide'. The answers are in your bookshelves, your journals, your work, your dreams, the movies you go to, the magazines you read, the people you wish you got to talk with more often, the blogs you go back to again and again.

What you're basically doing is figuring out who you are through figuring out what your true interests are – the themes of your work, your life — and then giving yourself permission to explore them to an extreme.

And if you're still drawing a blank, don't fret. Schedule in some wandering-around time. And by that I mean: go explore. Get out into the world. See what snags your interest and follow up on that. Our creativity does not exist in a vacuum: it needs people, material, activities and ideas to interact with in order to ignite. And if you're engaged in this kind of quest, don't be afraid to share it online through your blog, your tweets and links. Sharing your process will help others with their process.

Set up your online networks so that they will filter content for you. Twitter is especially powerful for this: you can seek out the people who already embody what you want to embody and organize them into Lists according to certain topics. If I'm seeking good articles related to feminism, for example, I'll go to a different List than if I'm looking for cutting-edge stuff about social media.

Also explore the different content curation tools, from stumbleupon to paper.li, to alltop and scoop.it and redux.com. Find the ones that work for you and take advantage.

And you are using a blog reader, right? Right???

One of my most favorite recent sayings is by Steven Johnson: "Chance favors the connected mind." Links are the chance to connect to people and information and to people through information, to both give and receive in a way that invites a kind of magic into your life. It might be the idea that finally breaks your novel open, or the stranger who inspires you just when you need it most, or the nugget of information that suddenly resolves a problem you've been mulling over for weeks.

A link, after all, is also a bridge, bringing different ideas and people and networks together. You can benefit from links and pay it forward by creating new links according to your own unique pattern of mind.

Everything connects.

how to embrace your naked ambition and make your subconscious your bitch

A stunning young dancer named Sabine took me aside after our private dance class – the choreography still in my body, the song still in my head – because she knew that I was into creativity and, as one person put it, "creative consulting".

We talked about the unique style of class that she was developing. As a member of her target audience I could give her some feedback. Then I said, "You sound like someone who should have her own studio."

"Maybe," she said.

When somebody touches on the thing they really want, or is navigating in that direction, an energy moves into her body and lights her up. I wasn't seeing that in Sabine.

She said, "How important is it to have a vision?"

"Really important," I said immediately. "And you need to make it as clear and specific and as vivid as you can. You need to see it, hear it, feel it, touch it, you need to write it down, because then you activate different parts of your brain and burn that vision in on a very deep level. You program your subconscious to orient you in that direction."

Your subconscious determines your life. It's your subconscious that is constantly absorbing information, mulling things over, and making decisions; your conscious mind makes up reasons and stories to explain those decisions. It's also your subconscious that determines, of the millions of bits of incoming stimuli that bombard your body at any given moment, the handful of things you will notice versus everything else that you will filter out.

(I just ordered a new car in the color 'glacier blue'. So now, everywhere I look I'm noticing baby-blue cars. It's not like there's been a sudden explosion of baby-blue car owners. My subconscious has decided, for some reason known only to itself, that it's vitally important that I pay attention to this. So thank you, subconscious.)

What you put your (very limited) attention on, is the stuff that grows and shapes your perceptions, your reality, your life. So when you program your mind with a Vision, it will direct your attention to the things and people and opportunities that can help you make that vision manifest. Fail to program it at all, and your subconscious will lead you where it wants to go: to the couch, or the mall, or the hot guy who's not your boyfriend, or the leftover cake in the fridge. You want to be ruled by your subconscious about as much as you want to be ruled by your dog, no matter how cute it can act.

"But sometimes you can have a vision about finding your vision," I added. "Sometimes your mission is to find your mission. You know? Because it's not like anybody hands us a list of things we really want. We need to figure that out through trial and error.

"It's like passion." I was on a roll now. "This thing about finding your passion? It can seriously fuck people up, because they think your Passion is like this gift-wrapped box that is just dropped at your door. It doesn't work like that. You have to go into the world and you actually have to do shit, and figure out from that what feels good to you – those moments, even those little things, that make you feel strong and energized and most like yourself. And you organize your life to do more of those things. And you go in that direction.

"So you keep following that feeling of being engaged and alive, the activities that give you that. And over time you start to put things together. Maybe you pull something from here, and something else from over there…and you begin to combine them into a unique skillset…until one day you wake up and you realize that you haven't found your passion so much as started to actually live it.

"I think maybe developing a Vision," I said, "is kind of like that."

Your Vision is a living, organic thing, in relationship to you and also to the world. The heart of it remains the same, but the details change and evolve. The world is a rapidly changing place. If it was a car, the bumper sticker would read ADAPT OR DIE. This applies to your Vision as much as it applies to you, and the people who don't pay attention to where the puck is going (and not just where it was yesterday, or even today) might go the way of the dodo. Or the music industry.

Sabine suddenly said, "I want my own television show."

"You do?" I stared at her in delight. "Now that's a Vision! How come you didn't say before?"

Except I knew why not. It's the same reason I don't tell people that I want my own little digital media empire (although one day people will stop putting the 'digital' in front of the 'media'). It's partly because we fear how ridiculous it sounds, and also because – well, we're women, and women aren't supposed to admit to being such naked blazing balls of ambition. It might scare off the people whom we're supposed to please, and then nobody will ever love us, and we'll die alone in badly lit apartments with only our cats for company (unless we're allergic).

"I just think it sounds so stupid," said Sabine. "Because everybody wants their own TV show."

"I don't want my own TV show."

Sabine fleshed out her dream a bit more – how it brought together her acting background as well as her interests in fitness and spirituality – and what she didn't want it to be as well as what she did.

We talked about how she could start posting short videos on Youtube and building out her online presence (she already has a massive local following for her dance and fitness classes). We talked about her blogging. We talked about how TV is merging with the Internet until one day there won't be a distinction between them. The question isn't whether or not she can have her own show – but whether she can develop an audience to watch it. That takes some charisma, yes – fortunately she happens to have it – but also work and time and persistence and strategy and an ability to get through the days (or weeks, or months) when you're convinced you're a total loser and nobody cares and you might as well sit on the couch and watch soap operas and eat Chef Boy-Are-Dee from the can. (Don't do this.)

And then we left the studio and went out into the street and hugged goodbye and talked about getting together when I am in her town or she is in mine.

"You need to start being honest about your ambition," I said (making a mental note that it was time to get honest about mine).

And that, I think, was my big takeaway from the conversation. It's not enough to figure out what your Vision actually is (and this is a task in itself). You have to get honest about who you are and what you want. You have to declare yourself. Otherwise you'll get lost in your own smoke and mirrors, since we have an unnerving way of becoming the thing we thought we were only pretending to be.

Do you have a Vision, or a partial Vision, or are you piecing together a Vision from hunches, daydreams and glimmerings, your interests and strengths? Are you honest about it? With yourself? With others? If not, why not?

….and if you liked this post, well hell, I think you're fabulous and you should totally sign up to be on my List — it's that box up in the corner asking for your email. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

 

how to embrace your naked ambition and make your subconscious your bitch

A stunning young dancer named Sabine took me aside after our private dance class – the choreography still in my body, the song still in my head – because she knew that I was into creativity and, as one person put it, "creative consulting".

We talked about the unique style of class that she was developing. As a member of her target audience I could give her some feedback. Then I said, "You sound like someone who should have her own studio."

"Maybe," she said.

When somebody touches on the thing they really want, or is navigating in that direction, an energy moves into her body and lights her up. I wasn't seeing that in Sabine.

She said, "How important is it to have a vision?"

"Really important," I said immediately. "And you need to make it as clear and specific and as vivid as you can. You need to see it, hear it, feel it, touch it, you need to write it down, because then you activate different parts of your brain and burn that vision in on a very deep level. You program your subconscious to orient you in that direction."

Your subconscious determines your life. It's your subconscious that is constantly absorbing information, mulling things over, and making decisions; your conscious mind makes up reasons and stories to explain those decisions. It's also your subconscious that determines, of the millions of bits of incoming stimuli that bombard your body at any given moment, the handful of things you will notice versus everything else that you will filter out.

(I just ordered a new car in the color 'glacier blue'. So now, everywhere I look I'm noticing baby-blue cars. It's not like there's been a sudden explosion of baby-blue car owners. My subconscious has decided, for some reason known only to itself, that it's vitally important that I pay attention to this. So thank you, subconscious.)

What you put your (very limited) attention on, is the stuff that grows and shapes your perceptions, your reality, your life. So when you program your mind with a Vision, it will direct your attention to the things and people and opportunities that can help you make that vision manifest. Fail to program it at all, and your subconscious will lead you where it wants to go: to the couch, or the mall, or the hot guy who's not your boyfriend, or the leftover cake in the fridge. You want to be ruled by your subconscious about as much as you want to be ruled by your dog, no matter how cute it can act.

"But sometimes you can have a vision about finding your vision," I added. "Sometimes your mission is to find your mission. You know? Because it's not like anybody hands us a list of things we really want. We need to figure that out through trial and error.

"It's like passion." I was on a roll now. "This thing about finding your passion? It can seriously fuck people up, because they think your Passion is like this gift-wrapped box that is just dropped at your door. It doesn't work like that. You have to go into the world and you actually have to do shit, and figure out from that what feels good to you – those moments, even those little things, that make you feel strong and energized and most like yourself. And you organize your life to do more of those things. And you go in that direction.

"So you keep following that feeling of being engaged and alive, the activities that give you that. And over time you start to put things together. Maybe you pull something from here, and something else from over there…and you begin to combine them into a unique skillset…until one day you wake up and you realize that you haven't found your passion so much as started to actually live it.

"I think maybe developing a Vision," I said, "is kind of like that."

Your Vision is a living, organic thing, in relationship to you and also to the world. The heart of it remains the same, but the details change and evolve. The world is a rapidly changing place. If it was a car, the bumper sticker would read ADAPT OR DIE. This applies to your Vision as much as it applies to you, and the people who don't pay attention to where the puck is going (and not just where it was yesterday, or even today) might go the way of the dodo. Or the music industry.

Sabine suddenly said, "I want my own television show."

"You do?" I stared at her in delight. "Now that's a Vision! How come you didn't say before?"

Except I knew why not. It's the same reason I don't tell people that I want my own little digital media empire (although one day people will stop putting the 'digital' in front of the 'media'). It's partly because we fear how ridiculous it sounds, and also because – well, we're women, and women aren't supposed to admit to being such naked blazing balls of ambition. It might scare off the people whom we're supposed to please, and then nobody will ever love us, and we'll die alone in badly lit apartments with only our cats for company (unless we're allergic).

"I just think it sounds so stupid," said Sabine. "Because everybody wants their own TV show."

"I don't want my own TV show."

Sabine fleshed out her dream a bit more – how it brought together her acting background as well as her interests in fitness and spirituality – and what she didn't want it to be as well as what she did.

We talked about how she could start posting short videos on Youtube and building out her online presence (she already has a massive local following for her dance and fitness classes). We talked about her blogging. We talked about how TV is merging with the Internet until one day there won't be a distinction between them. The question isn't whether or not she can have her own show – but whether she can develop an audience to watch it. That takes some charisma, yes – fortunately she happens to have it – but also work and time and persistence and strategy and an ability to get through the days (or weeks, or months) when you're convinced you're a total loser and nobody cares and you might as well sit on the couch and watch soap operas and eat Chef Boy-Are-Dee from the can. (Don't do this.)

And then we left the studio and went out into the street and hugged goodbye and talked about getting together when I am in her town or she is in mine.

"You need to start being honest about your ambition," I said (making a mental note that it was time to get honest about mine).

And that, I think, was my big takeaway from the conversation. It's not enough to figure out what your Vision actually is (and this is a task in itself). You have to get honest about who you are and what you want. You have to declare yourself. Otherwise you'll get lost in your own smoke and mirrors, since we have an unnerving way of becoming the thing we thought we were only pretending to be.

Do you have a Vision, or a partial Vision, or are you piecing together a Vision from hunches, daydreams and glimmerings, your interests and strengths? Are you honest about it? With yourself? With others? If not, why not?

….and if you liked this post, well hell, I think you're fabulous and you should totally sign up to be on my List — it's that box up in the corner asking for your email. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

 

how to embrace your naked ambition and make your subconscious your bitch

A stunning young dancer named Sabine took me aside after our private dance class – the choreography still in my body, the song still in my head – because she knew that I was into creativity and, as one person put it, "creative consulting".

We talked about the unique style of class that she was developing. As a member of her target audience I could give her some feedback. Then I said, "You sound like someone who should have her own studio."

"Maybe," she said.

When somebody touches on the thing they really want, or is navigating in that direction, an energy moves into her body and lights her up. I wasn't seeing that in Sabine.

She said, "How important is it to have a vision?"

"Really important," I said immediately. "And you need to make it as clear and specific and as vivid as you can. You need to see it, hear it, feel it, touch it, you need to write it down, because then you activate different parts of your brain and burn that vision in on a very deep level. You program your subconscious to orient you in that direction."

Your subconscious determines your life. It's your subconscious that is constantly absorbing information, mulling things over, and making decisions; your conscious mind makes up reasons and stories to explain those decisions. It's also your subconscious that determines, of the millions of bits of incoming stimuli that bombard your body at any given moment, the handful of things you will notice versus everything else that you will filter out.

(I just ordered a new car in the color 'glacier blue'. So now, everywhere I look I'm noticing baby-blue cars. It's not like there's been a sudden explosion of baby-blue car owners. My subconscious has decided, for some reason known only to itself, that it's vitally important that I pay attention to this. So thank you, subconscious.)

What you put your (very limited) attention on, is the stuff that grows and shapes your perceptions, your reality, your life. So when you program your mind with a Vision, it will direct your attention to the things and people and opportunities that can help you make that vision manifest. Fail to program it at all, and your subconscious will lead you where it wants to go: to the couch, or the mall, or the hot guy who's not your boyfriend, or the leftover cake in the fridge. You want to be ruled by your subconscious about as much as you want to be ruled by your dog, no matter how cute it can act.

"But sometimes you can have a vision about finding your vision," I added. "Sometimes your mission is to find your mission. You know? Because it's not like anybody hands us a list of things we really want. We need to figure that out through trial and error.

"It's like passion." I was on a roll now. "This thing about finding your passion? It can seriously fuck people up, because they think your Passion is like this gift-wrapped box that is just dropped at your door. It doesn't work like that. You have to go into the world and you actually have to do shit, and figure out from that what feels good to you – those moments, even those little things, that make you feel strong and energized and most like yourself. And you organize your life to do more of those things. And you go in that direction.

"So you keep following that feeling of being engaged and alive, the activities that give you that. And over time you start to put things together. Maybe you pull something from here, and something else from over there…and you begin to combine them into a unique skillset…until one day you wake up and you realize that you haven't found your passion so much as started to actually live it.

"I think maybe developing a Vision," I said, "is kind of like that."

Your Vision is a living, organic thing, in relationship to you and also to the world. The heart of it remains the same, but the details change and evolve. The world is a rapidly changing place. If it was a car, the bumper sticker would read ADAPT OR DIE. This applies to your Vision as much as it applies to you, and the people who don't pay attention to where the puck is going (and not just where it was yesterday, or even today) might go the way of the dodo. Or the music industry.

Sabine suddenly said, "I want my own television show."

"You do?" I stared at her in delight. "Now that's a Vision! How come you didn't say before?"

Except I knew why not. It's the same reason I don't tell people that I want my own little digital media empire (although one day people will stop putting the 'digital' in front of the 'media'). It's partly because we fear how ridiculous it sounds, and also because – well, we're women, and women aren't supposed to admit to being such naked blazing balls of ambition. It might scare off the people whom we're supposed to please, and then nobody will ever love us, and we'll die alone in badly lit apartments with only our cats for company (unless we're allergic).

"I just think it sounds so stupid," said Sabine. "Because everybody wants their own TV show."

"I don't want my own TV show."

Sabine fleshed out her dream a bit more – how it brought together her acting background as well as her interests in fitness and spirituality – and what she didn't want it to be as well as what she did.

We talked about how she could start posting short videos on Youtube and building out her online presence (she already has a massive local following for her dance and fitness classes). We talked about her blogging. We talked about how TV is merging with the Internet until one day there won't be a distinction between them. The question isn't whether or not she can have her own show – but whether she can develop an audience to watch it. That takes some charisma, yes – fortunately she happens to have it – but also work and time and persistence and strategy and an ability to get through the days (or weeks, or months) when you're convinced you're a total loser and nobody cares and you might as well sit on the couch and watch soap operas and eat Chef Boy-Are-Dee from the can. (Don't do this.)

And then we left the studio and went out into the street and hugged goodbye and talked about getting together when I am in her town or she is in mine.

"You need to start being honest about your ambition," I said (making a mental note that it was time to get honest about mine).

And that, I think, was my big takeaway from the conversation. It's not enough to figure out what your Vision actually is (and this is a task in itself). You have to get honest about who you are and what you want. You have to declare yourself. Otherwise you'll get lost in your own smoke and mirrors, since we have an unnerving way of becoming the thing we thought we were only pretending to be.

Do you have a Vision, or a partial Vision, or are you piecing together a Vision from hunches, daydreams and glimmerings, your interests and strengths? Are you honest about it? With yourself? With others? If not, why not?

….and if you liked this post, well hell, I think you're fabulous and you should totally sign up for my List! This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

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