CREATOR
This is our 7th Note on one of Steve Chandler's dozens of books. As with all his others, this one is written in his ineffably self-effacingly funny and witty and wise style. Big Ideas we cover include: Meeting the coolest new Sphere (Hint: YOU! Codename: CREATOR!), two questions to guide your life ("Given whatever's going on, what would you like to create?" Plus: "Who do you need to be to rock that?"), the power of severe pruning, relax (and just do your job), the checklist (how's yours?), and grow lights (remember: What you shine the spotlight of your attention on grows!!).
Big Ideas
- Two Questions for youFor you.
- Severe Pruning = Glamorous= Glamorous.
- Relax and do your jobAnd do your job.
- The ChecklistHow’s yours?
- Shine your “Grow Light”Shine yours.
“The more spiritual work and study I did the more I saw that creativity and the life force were one and the same. And it was a force running through everybody, not just the chosen creative few.
… we were experiencing the same kind of higher power that the sages wrote about. A power without upper limits. You could call it a superpower—just what I longed for as a kid. Maybe my yearning and longing and reaching out for Superman as a boy was not total delusion.
If I wrote an adventure comic book today I would see if I could introduce a new superhero… My comic book’s superhero would be you.
I know that’s not a really exciting or marketable name for a superhero. ‘You!’
No, so let’s call you something else. How about this. Do you know how movies always acknowledge the ‘creator’ of various superhero characters? For example, Wonder Woman’s creator was William Marston. Imagine how powerful he must have been. It’s one thing to be Wonder Woman, but it’s quite another to be able to create Wonder Woman.
If these characters like Wonder Woman and Superman and Mighty Mouse are so powerful, just imagine how much more powerful their creators must be. That’s the ultimate superpower right there: the ability to create.
I’d call that hero ‘Creator.’ And the adventures I’d present would show you that it’s all based on a true story: the story of you.”
~ Steve Chandler from CREATOR
Welcome to the 75th Note on one of Steve Chandler’s books. Well, we haven’t done quite that many yet. (Hah.) Although Steve HAS written dozens of books at this stage, we’ve only featured six of them so far. Check them all out here.
I got this book in the mail yesterday. Literally. It just came out and Steve sent me a copy with a sweet little love note on the title page. If you’ve been following along, you know I love Steve and his down-to-earth, humble and powerful wisdom and style. We worked together for a couple years and I REALLY (!!!) wish I kept the same kinds of notes from *those* chats as I do with my chats these days with Phil Stutz. The man is a treasure trove of insights.
So, I got the book and basically started reading it immediately. Here I am on a Saturday afternoon typing away after finishing the book I started this morning. (“That’s like me!” lol)
As with all of Steve’s books, this one is written in his ineffably self-effacingly funny and witty and wise style. (Get a copy here.) Of course, it’s packed with Big Ideas and I’m excited to share a few of my favorites so let’s jump straight in!
Download MP3
Download PDFReal art comes from the ultimate, from a vision; from the spirit, as Beethoven would say; from God, as Bach would say.
Get the BookTwo Questions for you
“It gives me greater understanding of why my friend and life coach Steve Hardison used to ask me two questions, over and over in the course of our work together. When I described a problematic situation in my life, he would listen carefully and then say, ‘Okay, given that that’s the situation, what would you like to create?’
Notice that it was not ‘How do you want to solve it?’ As if the problem itself had all the power. As if the problem were a bomb we had to carefully disarm. He never saw the problem as having the power in the situation. He always saw creativity as having all the power. And together we didn’t really have to ‘solve’ anything. We didn’t need to. What we created made the problems fade from all relevance.
And the second question he’d always ask me would appear whenever it didn’t look like I could do some scary thing I needed to do. Instead of telling me what I needed to do, he would always ask me, ‘Who do you need to be?’ Because he always knew, and I learned through practice, that I could create that being. I could create who I needed to be. (It’s all we ever do anyway.)”
Got a “problem”?
“Okay, given that that’s the situation, what would you like to create?”
Seriously.
Given that whatever is going on is going on, WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO CREATE?
(btw: Although I never actually experienced this precise set of questions from Steve Hardison, I also worked with him and I can picture (and perhaps more accurately FEEL) him leaning in from his chair with a laser-like intensity (as I sat on his couch) to ask that question.)
So…
Know that once we become a CREATOR, that problem dissolves into the background.
Now for the second question. Feeling like you can’t do the scary thing you need to do?
OK. “Who do you need to be?”
As Steve tells us, we’re *always* (!!!) making ourselves up as we go along anyway so we might as well choose to be someone that CAN do what needs to get done, eh? (Hah.) (Seriously.)
P.S. I can’t think of “being” these days without thinking about James Clear’s brilliant wisdom on the etymology of the word identity so let’s soak our minds in those thoughts again, shall we?
In Atomic Habitshe tells us: “Identity change is the North Star of habit change. The remainder of this book will provide you with step-by-step instructions on how to build better habits for yourself, your family, your team, your company, and anywhere else you wish. But the true question is: ‘Are you becoming the type of person you want to become?’ The first step is not what or how, but who. You need to know who you want to be. Otherwise, your quest for change is like a boat without a rudder. And that’s why we’re starting here.
You have the power to change your beliefs about yourself. Your identity is not set in stone. You have a choice in every moment. You can choose the identity you want to reinforce today with habits you choose today. And this brings us to the deeper purpose of this book and the real reason habits matter.
Building better habits isn’t about littering your day with life hacks. It’s not about flossing one tooth each night or taking a cold shower each morning or wearing the same outfit each day. It’s not about achieving external measures of success like earning more money, losing weight, or reducing stress. Habits can help you achieve all of these things, but fundamentally they are not about having something. They are about becoming someone.
Ultimately, your habits matter because they help you become the type of person you wish to be. They are the channel through which you develop your deepest beliefs about yourself. Quite literally, you become your habits.”
All of which leads us to the etymological punch line: “The more you repeat a behavior, the more you reinforce the identity associated with that behavior. In fact, the word identity was originally derived from the Latin word essentitas, which means being, and identidem, which means repeatedly. Your identity is literally your “repeated beingness.’”
As I said in the Notes on Atomic Habits…
WOW. Your identity is LITERALLY your “repeated beingness.” <- That’s beautiful.
And, your identity, as James tells us, emerges from your HABITS: “Whatever your identity is right now, you only believe it because you have proof of it.”
So… Back to you and that challenge.
Who do you need to be to crush it? Go be it, Creator.
P.P.S. I’m also reminded of another great book all about a powerful question to help us make the shift from Victim to Creator: The Power of TED* by David Emerald. He tells us that whenever we feel Victimized by a “problem” (you’ll know you’re there by all the complaining and blaming you’re doing!), ask yourself this one simple question, “What do I want?”
That’s it. Ask yourself: “What do I want?”
Then go CREATE it.
Every breath you breathe is an act of creation. Every thought you think. And you can take it from there. Expand it and express it. Paint it all on the ceiling of your cathedral and into the calendar of your life.
Severe Pruning = Glamorous
“Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ‘As the gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree into one or two vigorous limbs, so should you stop off your miscellaneous activity and concentrate your force on one or a few points.’
Why should you do that?
Because more creative power is now available for the few points really important to you! So the pruning is a great idea. Look at the dying branches the gardener took away from the tree. Doesn’t the tree look healthier and more beautiful? …
We don’t glamorize severe pruning. We don’t even want to talk much about it. Even though upon further review it’s seen to be profoundly creative.”
Steve was coaching me during my creation and then destruction (hah and d’oh!) of the prior version of Optimize called en*theos.
I can VIVIDLY remember the day he shared that GENIUS Ralph Waldo Emerson quote to support me in making the (hard) decision to SEVERELY prune our business back to just me and my work. As in, reboot the biz from $1 million + of revenue to ZERO. (I can laugh now. Hah!)
And… It worked.
The severe pruning forced the sap into the most vigorous limb of the biz and we created something much more powerful and beautiful as a direct result of that gardening.
But it certainly wasn’t fun and that type of pruning, although often necessary in less dramatic ways, is rarely seen as particularly glamorous.
But enough about me. How about YOU? Got any pruning you need to do? From the mundane app that needs to go from your smartphone (yah, THAT one) to the “bigger” stuff?
Here are some gardening sheers for you! Let’s get to work. :)
Relax and do your job
“I have known of new coaches who start their panicky day with meridian tapping for abundance, deep yogic bellows-breathing for elevated mental states, aroma therapy for valor, and petitionary prayers to the supernatural so that they might be blessed with the exceptional, extraordinary powers they will need to make this impossible dream job work.
Hey, just slow down. See if you can get hold of yourself. Do you need to scare yourself to make this profession work out financially? Why would that be true?
My experience says its not true at all. The coaches I’ve seen succeed just relax and do their jobs. They do the doable. They learn the simple systems used by other successful coaches. They get up for work each day, just like other people do, and they practice their profession, just like an accountant or a lawyer would do.
They are okay feeling like average people having an average day making an average amount of progress each day toward professional strength and prosperity. Rather than taking a daring leap, they just settle in. From there, the good career gets created. The system is that simple: settle in.”
That’s from a micro-chapter in which Steve tells us that he “always used to think the idea of an unsuccessful success coach was funny.” (Hah.)
Then he proceeds to playfully try to ground the aspiring coach into stepping off the ledge of making a leap into doing the impossible into a more craftsman-like approach of a true professional. Which makes me think of Cal Newport and Steven Pressfield.
In So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Cal tells us about an aspiring yoga teacher who leaves her stable job after completing a 200-hundred hour yoga teacher certification program, thinking she’s now officially ready for the big time. Or, as Cal would put it, she thinks that the mere presence of her “passion” should anoint her as qualified and ready for professional success.
Results? Oops. She ran out of money before she could make her practice work. His warning? Passion isn’t enough. We need to bring a CRAFTSMAN mindset to our professional endeavors. (No matter how “passionate” we might be about any given field!)
Here’s how Cal puts it: “To summarize, I’ve presented two different ways people think about their working life. The first is the craftsman mindset, which focuses on what you can offer the world. The second is the passion mindset, which instead focuses on what the world can offer you. The craftsman mindset offers clarity, while the passion mindset offers a swamp of ambiguous and unanswerable questions… there’s something liberating about the craftsman mindset: It asks you to leave behind self-centered concerns about whether your job is ‘just right,’ and instead put your head down and plug away at getting really damn good. No one owes you a great career, it argues; you need to earn it—and the process won’t be easy.”
Then we have Steven Pressfield. All of his books on the subject of creativity and becoming a Professional are worth reading. Check out our Notes on The War of Art, Turning Pro and Do the Work. Along with The Artist’s Journey and Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t. The theme he comes back to again and again and again? As per the titles of those books: Be a Professional. Show up. DO THE WORK. Every.single.day. Tapping, yogic breathing and aroma therapy optional. Craftsman mindset required. :)
P.S. Steve wrote a book re: making it as a coach, appropriately titled: Prosperous Coach. He also runs a school all about helping coaches succeed financially. Learn more at SteveChandler.com.
P.P.S. Cal’s book title was based on wisdom from comedian Steve Martin. As Cal shares: “‘Nobody ever takes note of [my advice], because it’s not the answer they wanted to hear,’ Martin said. ‘What they want to hear is, ‘Here’s how you get an agent, here’s how you write a script,’ … but I always say, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’”
I agree. Want to be successful at ANYTHING? One more time: Relax and do your job. Show up. Turn pro. Become a craftsman. Do the work. Be so good they can’t ignore you.
P.P.P.S. Steve shares another brilliant example of the importance of doing the work. Quick context: He’s writing a book. He reaches out to the most creative person he knows, asking what THE most important thing is. His friend’s answer was simple: “Time spent with the book.” In other words, show up. Turn pro. Become a craftsman. Do the work.
It took me many years to learn that the answer to ‘How do I create?’ was . . . to create. To jump into the work. Jump into the waters. Then let innovation flow in from beyond thought. Keep moving inside the work. Don’t be afraid to open up to beyond what’s known. The best ideas eventually come from there. Not directly from ‘trying to figure this out.’
With a little more care, a little more courage, and, above all, a little more soul, our lives can be so easily discovered and celebrated in work, and not, as now, squandered and lost in its shadow.
The Checklist
“Just like you see the pilot on your commercial airline flight settling in prior to the flight. He or she smiles at you, settles in, shares some easy conversation with the attendants and the co-pilot and then goes through the routine instrument check.
The pilot doesn’t walk through the jetway hyperventilating, fingering rosary beads and yelling, ‘Oh My Dear Lord, I hope I’m up to this! God help me and my family!’ At least we hope not. …
So how about we just set that whole depressing cycle aside and do this profession like any other? We’ll just do the blue-collar work, maybe carry a notebook everywhere, learn the mechanics of the profession and have fun whacking away at it.
Maybe we can even be okay working from inside our comfort zone, doing what’s doable, and being happy with having a very enjoyable, average day. From there you can serve a lot of people well. It works for me and all the successful success coaches I know and work with. There’s a quiet power inside that approach. And it’s from that relaxed, enjoyable, doable experience of my workday that the most creative ideas arise.”
Those are the words that immediately follow the previous passage. I’m pulling them out because a) they’re great and b) I’m thinking a LOT about the coaching industry as we get ready to launch our inaugural Optimize Coach program (next week as I type this!).
Steve has a wonderful sense of humor. Of course, it’s funny to imagine the pilot freaking out before his or her flight but we’ve gotta make sure we note the fact that airline pilots have THE clearest systems EVER.
In fact, their approach is the basis of the wisdom in Atul Gawande’s Checklist Manifesto. Atul tells us: “Checklists, he found, established a higher baseline of performance.”
And: “It is common to misconceive how checklists function in complex lines of work. They are not comprehensive how-to guides, whether for building a skyscraper or getting a plane out of trouble. They are quick and simple tools aimed to buttress the skills of expert professionals. And by remaining swift and usable and resolutely modest, they are saving thousands upon thousands of lives.”
All of which begs the question of what a good Coach checklist would look like. It doesn’t exist. Which is one of the reasons why it’s a LOT easier to calmly establish a career as an accountant and/or lawyer or other professional. I hereby accept the challenge of figuring it out. :)
One more thing. Steve says: “We’ll just do the blue-collar work, maybe carry a notebook everywhere, learn the mechanics of the profession and have fun whacking away at it.”
Special emphasis on “maybe carry a notebook everywhere.” <- One thing I KNOW will be part of our training for Coaches and become a more integrated part of everything we do to Operationalize Optimizing?
The Carpe Diem journal we’re creating. A “notebook” that’ll serve as a sort of How to High Five Your Soul Checklist. Here’s a sketch of what we’re working on. Can’t wait to share more soon.
For now: What’s YOUR checklist? Here’s to rockin’ it.
Shine your “Grow Light”
“When an aware person (someone who knows and realizes that they are creative energy itself) notices that the sales of their services have been neglected—resulting in lower income—they simply turn their light (creative energy) toward the sales process.
‘Whatever you give your attention to grows’ is not just some positive slogan—it’s how the world actually works. The more you become aware that you are infinite, creative energy, the more you can see yourself as light.
Think of it the way a gardener uses a ‘grow light.’ Sometimes called a ‘plant light,’ grow lights make it easy to grow plants indoors. Grow lights are used for horticulture, indoor gardening, indoor hydroponics, and aquatic plants. Shine a grow light on your indoor plant and you ignite enough photosynthesis for the plant to grow.
Creativity is just like that light. You can shine your grow light anywhere. On your business, on relationships, on your exercise routine, on your music, and on your education.
And the gospel song sings, ‘This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.’”
Now, I don’t do much indoor gardening (hah) but I do love that vision of a “grow light.”
Want to grow something in your life?
SHINE THE LIGHT OF YOUR AWARENESS ON IT.
<- Yep. That’s the trick-ticket.
Which kinda begs the questions:
1. What would you like to see more of in your life? And,
2. How can you shine a little more grow light on it?
Get on that, my dear Superhero CREATOR friend!!
Do not fear mistakes. There are none.
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