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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Chase Jarvis
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December 7 - December 14, 2019
Without a resilient creative practice, supportive creative peers, a thriving community, and a powerful mindset, life just does not have the same vibrancy.
There’s no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There’s just people who use their creativity and people who don’t. And not using it doesn’t go without penalty. As it turns out, unused creativity is not benign, it’s dangerous. —BRENÉ BROWN
Creativity is a natural, life-sustaining, human function that is essential to our health and well-being. It’s as natural as breathing.
Your future rests on three distinct premises: You are creative by nature, endowed with a near limitless capacity to make and grow new things. Accessing this capacity requires a kind of creative muscle that must be strengthened to achieve your full potential. By identifying as a creative person, accepting the world around you as your canvas, and manifesting your ideas regularly, you will intuitively create the life you truly want for yourself.
art is a subset of creativity, but creativity itself isn’t limited to specific crafts. It’s the ability to make your ideas manifest in the world.
It’s a thrilling discovery to find yourself going where only you ever could.
Imagine what you want to create—without limitation. Design a strategy to make your dream a new reality. Execute your strategy and smash through obstacles. Amplify your vision to create the impact you seek.
It’s only through developing a capacity to create something that we can create everything.
The “soft” intuition we’ve been taught to ignore is actually the most vital gift we are given, not only as creators but as human beings.
Creators create. Action is identity. You become what you do. You don’t need permission from anybody to call yourself a writer, entrepreneur, or musician. You just need to write, build a business, or make music. You’ve got to do the verb to be the noun.
Fear is a gift, a precious instinct. Your primitive “reptile brain” is there to protect you and keep you alive. You can’t reason with it; it learns through action. But if you take action despite the fear and survive, it learns a tiny lesson. Over time, action by action, the volume of the negative voices goes down.
Your brain is just rehearsing lines from old scripts written by hacks, and the more you listen, the louder it gets. Ignore it. Write your own script.
What matters is that you start. All you’re deciding to do is to try. Do whatever you can with what you have. It will never feel like the right time. You will never be “ready.” Avoid preparing too much. Start before you are ready. Start with fear. Start with uncertainty. This is one of the biggest secrets of the most creative, happy, successful people: Just start.
Following your own path is like writing a script for a film. You can decide to write an indie flick or a summer blockbuster. Set modest goals or the loftiest ones imaginable—it’s your world to create. You establish the settings, you develop the characters, and you work out the plotlines.
If you are able to push through your fear and continue the process of growth and transformation, you may look over to realize that the once-fearsome guardian of the threshold has become a trusted helper at your side.
Be the hero of your own life. Walk your own path. When obstacles arise, go over, under, or around them. When you lose your way, listen for the call. Your heart will always lead you.
The cycle never ends. Rebellion is always a reaction. That means it’s just another form of control—you are controlled by the thing you are rebelling against. It’s not a choice; it’s a trap.
Instead of rebelling or conforming, simply choose. Choose yourself.
From an early age, we spend seven hours a day, 180 days a year, in a classroom. If we head to college, we’ve been head down at our desks for well over fifteen thousand hours. If it takes ten thousand hours to achieve mastery of a subject, what skill have we mastered in all that time? Not being disruptive, and doing whatever it takes to make the grade.
This is about revealing your authentic self. Even in a movie about aliens, dinosaurs, or swashbuckling archaeologists, all the audience wants to receive from us is truth. The deeper you go, the closer they will come.
James Joyce once said, “In the particular is contained the universal.” Your story is unique, weird, particular. When you share your truth with others, they connect with a universal truth within the particular. That’s the real reason it resonates with them.
“Think different” isn’t just a slogan. It’s a credo, one that made Apple the most profitable company in human history. People accused Steve Jobs of creating a “reality distortion field,” but he understood that reality is already distorted.
Forge your own reality. If others can do their own thing, why can’t you?
Make meaning, not money. Pursue your values. Pluck something straight from your own authentic weirdness and share it with the world.
No more bandwagons. In blazing your own trail and leaving your own footprints, you are far more likely to make something better—effortlessly, through the joy of exploration and discovery.
When we love what we’re making, we lean into it. We progress so much faster. And people will love it not because it’s more of the same, executed perfectly, but because, however rough, it’s a breath of fresh air.
Growing up, we build up layer after layer after layer of protection to keep ourselves safe. Every time we say something weird in class and the other kids laugh at us or we get picked last for a team, every time we put ourselves out there and fall flat on our faces, another layer of scar tissue is added. Eventually our real selves, and everything that makes us worth knowing, are buried.
Be honest and clear about the risks you’re taking. Figure out what things cost and how long things will take before you move ahead or call it quits.
As the philosopher and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius said, “The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts.”
The state of your mind, body, and spirit is the direct result of all the decisions you’ve made in your life up until this moment.
Physical health, cognitive performance, happiness, and well-being—these are driven almost entirely ...
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what nourishes you—pursuing creative paths that brought you joy as a kid or writing in a journal before others in your household wake up, for example—you’ll give yourself the chance to see your life and your personal agency in new and powerful ways.
You are a creative person. The world is abundant and full of possibilities. Your situation can always be changed. You can use your creativity to create the change you seek. Creativity is natural and healthy but requires practice. Creativity is ultimate personal power.
How do you build habits? Through consistent reinforcement. Habits are the path to your goals—whatever they may be.
A goal that is not supported by the right mindset or the necessary habits is just a pipe dream—it’s never gonna happen.
The goal is to achieve fluency so you can finally speak your mind.
Execute your strategy and smash through obstacles.
The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work. —OPRAH WINFREY
Instead of trying to plot out the perfect novel before you start writing, accept that it’ll take a few shitty drafts to get things sorted out and just start writing. Play. Enjoy the process. Write six different intros and throw five into the trash. You’ll figure a lot of it out along the way.
To act requires making a commitment. It’s time to stop dabbling. If you keep walking with your eyes open, you’ll course-correct, you’ll get to where you want to go. Decide what you’re going to try to achieve, and then take the very smallest possible step forward in service of that goal.
“Don’t think about making art,” he said. “Just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
You put your intuition to work whenever you start a creative project. Your intuitive filters become tuned to ideas and inspiration that relate to the goal. Intuition is why visualization and goal setting are so powerful: you have an amazing supercomputer that just needs marching orders and a program to run. The better you get at delegating the right stuff to your gut, the more powerful the results will be.
Hear the call, follow your path, execute, and repeat.
The work you do when no one is watching is the work that matters most. Pros don’t wait until they are pros to act like pros. The people who make it—whatever your definition of success might be—are the ones who are willing to show up and do the work without approval, permission, or praise.
Don’t fake it till you make it. Make it till you make it.
Stop thinking, take action, and the results will take care of themselves.
You imagined a future for yourself in Step I, and you designed the habits to build it in Step II. Now it’s time to trust the plan and keep moving forward. Don’t get stuck.
More learning equals more success.
Once you’ve taken a skill from “How do I hold this tool?” to “I made six of these today, would you like one?” you’ve developed the meta-skill of how to learn. You’ll be able to grow and transform your life at a pace you never thought possible.
Complete command of a language unlocks a new world—friendship, culture, tradition, history.
