10 Empowering Seth Godin Quotes from The Icarus Deception To Help You Take Your Leap

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Excerpt: 10 Quotes from The Icarus Deception to help you take your leap of courage into the world of art and start designing it the way we see fit!

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Book Synopsis:

In Seth Godin’s most inspiring book yet, he challenges readers to find the courage to treat their work as a form of art. Everyone knows that Icarus’s father made him wings and told him not to fly too close to the sun. But he ignored that warning and plunged to his doom. We’ve retold this myth, and many others like it, to generations of kids. All these stories have the same lesson: Play it safe. Obey your parents. Listen to the experts. It was the perfect propaganda for the industrial economy.

What boss wouldn’t want employees to believe that obedience and conformity are the keys to success? But there’s another part of the myth that those in power hope you’ll forget. Icarus was also warned not to fly too low, because sea water would ruin the lift in his wings. Flying too low is even more dangerous than flying too high, because it feels deceptively safe.

The safety zone has moved. The propaganda has been exposed, and the old promises have been broken: Conformity no longer leads to comfort. But the good news is that creativity is scarce, and more valuable than ever. So is choosing to do something unpredictable and brave: make art. Being an artist isn’t a genetic disposition or a specific talent.

It’s an attitude we can all adopt.  It’s a hunger to seize new ground, make connections, and work without a map. If you do those things you’re an artist, no matter what it says on your business card. Whether you’re a teacher, engineer, doctor, middle manager, or customer service rep, you can fly higher by bringing your best self to work. You can care about what you’re doing today and how you can improve tomorrow. Godin shows us how it’s possible, and convinces us why it’s essential.

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The List: 10 Empowering Seth Godin Quotes from The Icarus Deception To Help You Take Your Leap

“If your team is filled with people who work for the company, you’ll soon be defeated by tribes of people who work for a cause.”

Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception (Page 13)

“Don’t worry about your stuff. Worry about making meaning instead.”

Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception (Page 25)

On Money: “We can’t suddenly quit a job and then race to find a form of art that will pay off before the next mortgage payment is due.  Creating art is a habit, one that we practice daily or hourly until we get good at it … Art isn’t about the rush of victory that comes from being picked. Nor does it involve compliance. Art in the post-industrial age is a lifelong habit, a stepwise process that incrementally allows us to create more art.”

Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception (Page 38)

“You don’t make art after you become an artist. You become an artist by ceaselessly making art.”

Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception (Page 212)

“The myth that the CEO is going to discover you and nurture you and ask you to join her for lunch is just that, a Hollywood myth.”

Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception (Page 48)

“The joy of art is particularly sweet, though, because it carries with it the threat of rejection, of failure, and of missed connections. It’s precisely the high-wire act of “this might not work” that makes original art worth doing.”

Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception (Page 93)

“Courage doesn’t always involve physical heroism in the face of death. It doesn’t always require giant leaps worthy of celebration. Sometimes, courage is the willingness to speak the truth about what you see and to own what you say.”

Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception (Page 17)

Three for one: “I don’t care how many friends you have on Facebook or how many followers you have on Twitter. Those are not actual friends or truly followers. I care about how many people will miss you if you’re not back here again tomorrow.” | “The opportunity is not in being momentarily popular with the anonymous masses. It’s in being missed when you’re gone, in doing work that matters to the tribe you choose.” | “The rest of the world isn’t nearly as important as the few who are here.”

Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception (Page 44)

“While someone can attempt to shame you, shame must also be accepted to be effective. We can’t make you feel shame without your participation.”

Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception (Page 123)

On creating art: “It’s entirely possible that there won’t be a standing ovation at the end of your journey. That’s okay. At least you lived.”

Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception (Page 218)

Bonus: On Criticism:

“I was amplifying the negative at the expense of the positive, not to serve any useful function, not to make my writing better, but to destroy it. The lizard brain, so attuned to people laughing behind our backs, was on high alert for this sort of criticism and would do anything it could to stop me from writing again. I haven’t sought out and read a review or a tweet since.”

Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception (Page 127)

Afterword

Seth reminds us that, ”…We’ve had these doors open wide for only a decade or so, and most people have been brainwashed into believing that their job is to copyedit the world, not to design it.”  What we need to do is take the leap of courage into the world of art and start designing it the way we see fit.  It’s in the process of designing art that we are truly able to live and fully express ourselves… and I’d like to think that living is what life is all about.

So, what’d you say?

Is it going to take courage?  Absolutely!  

But as Seth reminds us, ”Courage doesn’t always involve physical heroism in the face of death. It doesn’t always require giant leaps worthy of celebration. Sometimes, courage is the willingness to speak the truth about what you see and to own what you say.”  All we need to do is take it one day at a time.  Seth elaborates on this and says, “Creating art is a habit, one that we practice daily or hourly until we get good at it … Art isn’t about the rush of victory that comes from being picked. Nor does it involve compliance. Art in the post-industrial age is a lifelong habit, a stepwise process that incrementally allows us to create more art.”

This is so vital to understand because in a society where we’re always looking for winners and losers and people to compare ourselves to, the realization that we need to have is that it’s not about winning or losing…  It’s about being able to create and continue creating for as long as we possibly can!  It’s a journey, not a destination.  That is a life well lived and that is a life worth living.

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If you enjoyed these quotes from The Icarus Deception then you should definitely consider reading Seth’s book in full. Details below:

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