Creative Responsibility

We are creative beings. Our purpose is to create.

If we are frustrated or unfulfilled it could be that we aren’t creating anything considerable in our lives.

Men are drawn to workshops/ kitchens/ laboratories/ gyms/ studios/ building projects like moths to a flame.
Welcome to the biggest workshop/ kitchen/ laboratory/ gym/ studio/building project of your life: you.

Habits are the building blocks of creation.

“We are what we repeatedly do…” – Aristotle
“…5 times.” – Ferris

Your habits may be building your dreams. Your habits may be bogging you down.
How do you know which? By holding your habits up to your goals and projects that you are pursuing.

Habits without goals are boring, and often get abandoned.
Goals without habits are frustrating, and often get abandoned.

The key is to reverse engineer your goals and projects into daily building blocks that you can put together over time.

What exciting goal do I want to achieve?
What habits must I adopt in order to get this result?

There is power in modelling: study the people who are already successful in the goals that you have set for yourself. Look closely for their habits, If you do what they did, you will end up getting similar results to them.

Where you focus is where you start moving towards. When you are driving and you look out the window to your left, thats where the car starts veering towards.

A daily focus on your goals creates purposeful direction that begins to take over your circumstances.

When my current circumstances are in conflict with my goals, I have to fight against the feeling of my habits being powerless. I often tell myself that I am building for 40.

We under estimate the power of small compounding habits over a decade. And so I visualise what my life will look like at 40, if I can just carry on doing these simple habits.

I highly recommend the book ‘The Slight Edge’ by Jeff Olsen.

One of my goals is to live to 120 years old. So I have been studying really healthy old people to find their habits: 2l of water/day. 9 servings of veg/day. No sugar. No tv. Deep breathing. Power posture. Smile and laugh a lot. Thankfulness. Honour your parents. Lift weights 3days/week. Aerobic exercise 3days/week. Have a deep sense of purpose (many men die shortly after retiring because they lose their sense of purpose and contribution).

One of my goals is to be fantastically wealthy. So I have been studying really wealthy old people to find their habits: have written goals that you read twice daily. Pencil your goals into your diary. Seek out a mentor. Have a written budget that you review weekly. Be generous. Read every day towards your purpose. Journal your thoughts every day. No tv. No junk food. No gossip. Make phone calls. Make appointments. Say thank you.

 

My last point on making habits stick is the power of Automation: lock yourself into good habits by removing the option of backing out or slacking off.

Make and schedule appointments, then just keep showing up. Pay ahead of time whenever possible. Find or make friends with people who have similar goals to you and keep each other accountable to your ability. Set bets and have fun with rewards and forfeits with them. Pay a coach/mentor/trainer to keep you on track. A good coach is worth their weight in gold for their ability to fast track your results and breakthrough obstacles.

Continually plant seeds in the garden of your dreams. Patiently water and weed your seeds. And in due season you will reap the fruits of your labour.