“Understand: the greatest impediment to creativity is your impatience, the almost inevitable desire to hurry up the process, express something, and make a splash. What happens in such a case is that you do not master the basics; you have no real vocabulary at your disposal. What you mistake for being creative and distinctive is more likely an imitation of other people’s style, or personal rantings that do no really express anything. Audiences, however, are hard to fool. They feel the lack of rigor, the imitative quality, the urge to get attention, and they turn their backs, or give the mildest praise that quickly passes.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery
“Sometimes greater danger comes from success and praise than from criticism. If we learn to handle criticism well, it can strengthen us and help us become aware of flaws in our work. Praise generally does harm. Ever so slowly, the emphasis shifts from the joy of the creative process to the love of attention and to our ever-inflating ego. Without realizing it, we alter and shape our work to attract the praise that we crave.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery
“Creativity is by its nature an act of boldness and rebellion. You are not accepting the status quo or conventional wisdom. You are playing with the very rules you have learned, experimenting and testing the boundaries. The world is dying for bolder ideas, for people who are not afraid to speculate and investigate. Creeping conservatism will narrow your searches, tether you to comfortable ideas, and create a downward spiral—as the creative spark leaves you, you will find yourself clutching even more forcefully to dead ideas, past successes, and the need to maintain your status. Make creativity rather than comfort your goal and you will ensure far more success for the future.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery
“The human mind is naturally creative, constantly looking to make associations and connections between things and ideas. It wants to explore, to discover new aspects of the world, and to invent. To express this creative force is our greatest desire, and the stifling of it is the source of our misery. What kills the creative force is not age or a lack of talent, but our own spirit, our own attitude. We become too comfortable with the knowledge we have gained in our apprenticeships. We grow afraid of entertaining new ideas and the effort that this requires. To think more flexibly entails a risk—we could fail and be ridiculed. We prefer to live with familiar ideas and habits of thinking, but we pay a steep price for this: our minds go dead from the lack of challenge and novelty; we reach a limit in our field and lose control over our fate because we become replaceable.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery
“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” ~ Goethe, via Blog of Jonathan Fields
“Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.” ~ Rita Mae Brown, via Blog of Jonathan Fields
“Creativity is often misunderstood. People often think of it in terms of artistic work – unbridled, unguided effort that leads to beautiful effect. If you look deeper, however, you’ll find that some of the most inspiring art forms – haikus, sonatas, religious paintings – are fraught with constraints.” ~ Marissa Mayer, via Talk Like TED
15 Action Inspiring Seth Godin Quotes from Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck? (Enough Getting Them In A Row)
Excerpt: This is a massive 608 page book that’s packed with insight. Our 15 quotes from Whatcha Gonna Do with That Duck? highlight some of the best.
Read More »15 Action Inspiring Seth Godin Quotes from Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck? (Enough Getting Them In A Row)
“It may be more important to be awake than to be successful, balanced, or healthy. What does it mean to be awake? Perhaps to be living with a lively imagination, responding honestly and courageously to opportunity and avoiding the temptation to follow mere habit or collective values. It means to be an individual, in every instance manifesting the originality of who we are. This is the ultimate form of creativity – following the lead of the deep soul as we make a life.”
Thomas Moore, Original Self | ★ Featured on this book list.
Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck? [Book]
Book Overview: Made for dipping into again and again, Whatcha Gonna Do with That Duck? brings together the very best of Seth Godin’s acclaimed blog and is a classic for fans both old and new. ‘Getting your ducks in a row is a fine thing to do. But deciding what you are going to do with that duck is a far more important issue.’ Since he started blogging in the early 1990s, he has written more than two million words and shaped the way we think about marketing, leadership, careers, innovation, creativity, and more. Much of his writing is inspirational and some is incendiary. Collected here are six years of his best, most entertaining, and most poignant blog posts, plus a few bonus ebooks.
Buy from Amazon! Not on Audible…
Great on Kindle. Great Experience. Great Value. The Kindle edition of this book comes highly recommended on Amazon.
Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
“My feeling is that the more often you create and share ideas, the better you get at it. The process of manipulating and ultimately spreading ideas improves both the quality and the quantity of what you create; at least it does for me.” ~ Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?
“Ninety-nine percent of the time, in my experience, the hard part about creativity isn’t coming up with something no one has ever thought of before. The hard part is actually executing the thing you’ve thought of. The devil doesn’t need an advocate. The brave need supporters, not critics.” ~ Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?
“If we want to make meaning, we need to make art. Cook, write, draw, doodle, paint, scrapbook, take pictures, collage, knit, rebuild an engine, sculpt, dance, decorate, act, sing – it doesn’t matter. As long as we’re creating, we’re cultivating meaning.” ~ Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
“‘I’m not very creative’ doesn’t work. There’s no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and people who don’t. Unused creativity doesn’t just disappear. It lives within us until it’s expressed, neglected to death, or suffocated by resentment and fear.” ~ Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection