“Develop your taste. Take a good, long look at anyone creating meaningful work. You will see that it wasn’t their skill that came first but their taste. With time, they became so inspired by their taste, that they wanted to create something themselves that could live up to it. In other words, they honed their skills to make something worthy of their taste. You shouldn’t be a snob about many things in life. Your taste, however, is an exception. Watch great films. Read gorgeous books. Spin brilliant records. Eat delicious food. Study extraordinary people. Consume. Consume. Consume. Develop your taste. Refine your palate. Your skills will follow.”
Cole Schafer
“John D. Rockefeller would take regular breaks from his notoriously demanding schedule to mill about in his garden—it was his personal escape. Find your “garden” and go there often. Practice stillness, flex the solitude muscle. Be bored for at least 15 minutes per day. It’s an unlock for creativity and mindfulness.”
Sahil Bloom
“The muses never bless the unfocused. And even if they did, how would they notice?”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 124)
“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
Gustave Flaubert, via Discipline Is Destiny (Page 42) | Read Matt’s Blog on this quote ➜
“I tell my students, one of the most important things they need to know is when they are their best, creatively. They need to ask themselves, What does the ideal room look like? Is there music? Is there silence? Is there chaos outside or is there serenity outside? What do I need in order to release my imagination?”
Toni Morrison, via Discipline Is Destiny (Page 40)
“Inspiration comes on the twenty-fifth attempt, not the first. If you want to make something excellent, don’t wait for a brilliant idea to strike. Create twenty-five of what you need and one will be great. Inspiration reveals itself after you get the average ideas out of the way, not before you take the first step.”
James Clear
“Science can never win against art, and logic can never win against love. History can never win against myth, and reality is poor compared to dreams, very poor. So if you carry any idea against imagination, drop it. Because we all carry it—this age is very anti-imagination. People have been taught to be factual, realistic, empirical, and all sorts of nonsense. People should be more dreamy, more childlike, more ecstatic. People should be able to create euphoria. And only through that do you reach your original source.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 249)
“What fascinates me about the character of Alexander the Great is that he seemed to see the future with such clarity and such intensity as to make it virtually impossible that it would not come true—and that he would be the one to make it so. That’s you and me at the inception of any creative project. The book/ screenplay/ nonprofit/ start-up already exists in the Other World. Your job and mine is to bring it forth in this one.”
Steven Pressfield, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be (Page 104)
“When you and I put our ass where our heart wants to be, the universe responds. We change. We see ourselves differently. But others, sometimes those we are not aware of (and whom we have no idea are aware of us), see us differently too. They may come to our aid in ways we could never have predicted and by some word or act of kindness change everything.”
Steven Pressfield, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be (Page 41)
Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be [Book]
Book Overview: Are you losing your “war of art”? Are you being defeated by a tendency to procrastination, self-doubt, fear, distraction, and perfectionism? Are you self-sabotaging your loftiest artistic entrepreneurial dreams? The antidote is in nine words: Put your ass where your heart wants to be. Can you shift your artistic identity—your “ass”—from the shallow, fearful, superficial ego to the wise, loving, fearless self? Can you commit to your dream for the long haul and for keeps? In this book, best-selling author Steven Pressfield delivers the tough-love inspiration to help you make this life-altering transformation.
“The first time you bake cupcakes, you will certainly follow the recipe with rigor. The third time, you might improvise and screw up. Learning your lesson, you will follow the recipe again and again as closely as you can. At this point, by the fifth time, some people actually learn to bake. They improvise successfully. They understand the science and the outcomes. They develop a kind of gracefulness in the kitchen. Others merely plod along. They’re cooks, not chefs. We have too many cooks. The world is begging for chefs.”
Seth Godin, Graceful (Page 5)
“The reason creativity wilts inside of us like a vase full of snipped wildflowers is the very same reason love fades. Somewhere along the line, we stop noticing. We can never stop noticing. The moment we stop noticing, we might as well be dead. We’re alive and breathing but we feel nothing at all. Creativity and love dies when we feel nothing at all. And so we notice so we we can feel because, in the words of Klinkenborg, noticing means thinking with all your senses.”
Cole Schafer