Mother's Day & Creative Menopause

Happy Mother's Day to the women and men that have given birth to goodness in this world beyond the physical realm (ie children). Mother Nature has no gender. Nature is simply our nature. It's in all of us - both men and women. All creation must be mothered and fathered though religion has taught us to only honor The Father. You don't have to create a day to honor something that you should honor ever day.

Many men and women are dealing with creative menopause. Menopause literally means the permanent physiological, or natural, cessation of menstrual cycles that women face in the biological realm. Our creative spirit approaches menopause every time we say "no" to a great idea. Ideas impregnate us at unique times for unique reasons to carry within and then ultimately give birth to. But after constantly aborting those ideas by saying "no", we bring creative menopause upon ourselves.

Oftentimes we blame our careers for killing our creativity. False. Our creativity is just going to our careers. At work we're expected to create value which our company captures as money, pays us in a salary, and then takes a profit. If you aren't creating value, they won't continue paying you.

We are all have a mother and father in us for we all came from a mother and father. In this divorce-driven society, I've seen single mothers successfully raise beautiful children because they were able to access the father in themselves. I'm not saying that's cool, but masculine energy is in women and feminine energy is in men.

Therefore, today, I'm not honoring a particular gender. I'm honoring anyone who has given birth to a child or idea seeded in them by Spirit.

Thank you all,

I'm starting a series on my blog called the Mix-tion-ary. Basically, I mix words together to create new meanings. It's like remixing a song to create a new song. As a writer, I sometimes feel confined by the English language, so in order to fully express myself to myself and the others, I will create new words to help me define and articulate how I feel.

#1: Entrepre-new-real

A characteristic in everyone but only accessible to one who is aware of the creative force within them and is willing to undertake the birth of a new reality through any form of creation (ie art, agriculture, business, etc).

The word "entrepreneur" is a loanword from French. In French the verb "entreprendre" means "to undertake", with "entre" coming from the Latin word meaning "between", and "prendre" meaning "to take".

Today, the term social entrepreneur is very popular because they have dis-covered new models of business that unify social mission with financial ambition. One's social mission seeks to create value first. One's financial ambition seeks to capture as much of the value created as possible.

Google is perhaps the best model of social entrepreneurship to date with the social mission of organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful and the financial ambition actualized through their highly profitable Google Adwords profit model.

To change is to create new avenues to a destine-nation. The alternative is insanity, which can be defined as doing the same thing over and over and expected a different results. Whether as entrepre-new-ers or intrapre-new-ers, lasting change will only come through every human being tapping into the entrepre-new-real spirit within them.

NOTE: This is fake!

Today, Apple released the new iPodium. The goal is create an easy way for the camera shy YouTubers to share their life stories via audio. The device plugs into your iPod and allows you to record yourself, make freestyle music, conduct interviews, or digitize meetings and then upload them to iTunes for personal or worldwide distribution to anyone near you using WiFi. Think Napster in your pocket. Apple executives believe that while the success of the iPod has helped them beat other hardware and electronics companies like Microsoft and Sony to the pocket, they believe that their latest innovative creation, the iPodium, will cannibalize their iPod sales by 2010 as written content like blogs, newspapers, and books shift to audio only.

One Apple engineer quotes:
"Every time I put on my iPod in the CalTrain, I realized that I was non-verbally communicating to the people next to me that the musicians' stories and voices were more important to me than their stories. But when you think about phenomena like blogging, Wikipedia, and YouTube it's ultimately about allowing people to share their own stories, not just accessing others."

A Stanford Communications professors said:
"Oftentimes the reason we download a certain song is because it resonates with us, but we rarely consider how many people might resonate with our personal untold stories. Everyone's life story could be a New York Times best seller if we all felt free to be our authentic selves by creating space for one another to share. The person sitting next to me on the train or plane could potentially meet my needs at that moment in a way that the songs on my iPod can't because conversation is a two-way street and fresh, whereas most mass media is one-way and reproduced."

An avid iPod user said:
"Why do I want to connect with a musician that I'll never likely meet rather than the person sitting right next to me?" Wouldn't it be more powerful to give the person next to me a voice by opening my ear to them instead or recognize my own voice by sharing my own story with someone else?"

An Apple executive quotes:
"Just like our I-Pods, our I-Podium is always with us. It's our voice, it's our life, it's our story. Everyone has one. I-Pods allow us to hear other people's stories, but the I-Podium will allow us to share our own stories. As a world, we keep living the same story over and over because we keep listening to the same story over and over. Whatever your medium may be...music, video, writing, speech, painting, etc...make sure that you share as much with the world as you take from it. "

A hip hop artist said:
Hip hop gave me my voice. It was my outlet. It's my political stage...and podium. Everybody needs a way to tell their story to the world. Hip hop is mine. In this world, nobody's voice should be louder than someone else's and nobody should have a monopoly on the people's eyes and ears. It's like my man Nas said "All I need is one mic."

I’m sure you’ve heard of the concept of writer’s block. You may have even experienced it before. Writer’s block is the inability to freely express yourself through writing. In life, many of have a disease called liver’s block. By liver, I don’t mean the body part, I mean you, the person living your life. There are 3 reasons why liver’s block persist in our society:

1. No space and time to create

Sometimes writers go live in a cabin for a couple of months so that they can have some peace and quiet without and within. When we’re in the chaotic world, there is no time for that. We spend almost 60% of our waking hours working for someone else, another 20% preparing to get there and back (ie dressing, driving, dining), leaving only 20% of our time to do what we want.

2. No ink

To be honest a lot of us are just out of ink. We live our lives getting to one day be instead of being to one day get. Passion is the liquid of life, but we have killed off the very thing that inspires us by silencing the small voice within. Every time we say no to our dreams, they get quieter and quieter. By the time we are ready to live them, they are mute and it's too late.

3. No blank paper

When I think of someone with writer’s block, I imagine a whole bunch of crumpled up pieces of paper in a nearby garbage can. That’s okay! A blank piece of paper means an opportunity for a fresh start. Oftentimes, the piece of paper we are looking at is filled with old stuff and red ink from the past. Ball it up. Let it go. And throw into the hoop of the past where it belongs.

I think we can all agree that change is constant. Therefore, the creation story never ends because creation always is. The real question is who is writing your chapter of our collective story? Each day is a blank sheet of paper that we can write/live what we want. If you’re not writing your own story, then who is?

Throughout our lives, we have all come up with great ideas. What if...Why isn't there...Imagine a world where...But merely coming up with great ideas is meaningless unless we know what to do with them when we get them. How many great ideas have you let spoil in your mind? Raw ideas expire because we don't truly believe in the idea and/or we don't believe in our own ability to manifest the idea. Like food, ideas have expiration dates and we need to treat them in a similar way.

1. Cook them:

Some ideas need to be put the fire. Place the idea in the conversation pot and let it marinate. Stir gently every 2-3 minutes. After 10 minutes, apply the simmering heat of pessimistic questions, but be careful not to allow the raw idea to burn. Cover the pot when the idea has started to boil and let it stand until it is ready.

2. Freeze them:

Some ideas are so far ahead of there time that they need to be frozen for later use. They will be valuable later, but the world isn't ready yet. Many great ideas are dependent on advances in technology (ie faster, cheaper) or shifts in the market (ie law, regulations, consciousness) that may not change for years. When ideas are frozen, there is uncertainty about whether they will be useful in the future or not. Anything left in the freezer too long can get outdated. For ideas that may succeed in the short term, simply refrigerate them, but make sure to use them before they spoil.

3. Let them sit:

Like fruit, sometimes idea simply aren't ripe yet and then just need a little bit of time to mature into their full state. Just make sure you watch the idea carefully and take full advantage of it when it is at its sweetest.

4. Give them away:

There are cases when you just might have too many ideas and/or you may have a hot idea but you know that you aren't the one to execute it. If either of these cases arise, don't try to hold onto the idea and rob the world. Instead, share. Give the ideas to people you know who may value them and put them to use. Even if the idea that came through you, but you aren't passionate about it, there are still ways to capture value if you initiate the manifestation. People like song writers that can't sing have made careers out of doing this.

At the very least, preserve your ideas by writing them down. Keep a pen and pad near your bed for those midnight and morning ideas. Explore the idea by taking an hour to see if you're just crazy or if the idea really makes sense.

1. Competition: Browse the internet to see if anyone is doing anything similar
2. Startup Costs: Investigate how much it might costs to get started
3. Market Size: Estimate how many people might benefit from it

Each idea could be the one. Don't let any idea (especially your $1 million one) spoil.

A good friend of mine, Heidy Chong, recently produced a DVD called Real People Cook (www.realpeoplecook.com) where she features 17 Stanford students preparing their favorite healthy dish. (You've got to try the jalepeno pizza with nuts and dates!) Forget bi-racial; Heidy is tri-cultural (Mexian + Chinese + American) and she believes that her purpose is to unite people of all cultures through food. Without any background in Final Cut, she self-produced and self-financed the video in less than a month.

During a 3 hour conversation with Heidy last night, Heidy said that "More people have come up to me and said how much they were inspired by my commitment and passion than have actually bought or watched the DVD." The question "What's the true final product?" immediately popped into my mind. Is it the DVD itself? or is it Heidy?

Oftentimes when we create something (ie. produce a film, write an essay, organize an event, cook a meal, paint a picture, etc) or manifest an idea, we think about that which we've created as the final product. However, I've discovered that if the creation process was truly meaningful and challenging, then it is actually the creator (you) that actually gets shaped by the process. Therefore, you are also a product of the creation process, which is life.

When we hear "S/he was just a product of their environment," that implies that someone allowed the world to shape who they are by not adding to the creation process. Heidy is one of many examples of someone who by initiating her own creation process through the production of the Real People Cook DVD has:

1. helped shape the world by creating a material product, the DVD, while simultaneously
2. shaping herself through the process of creating the DVD as she seeks to reach her fullest potential, which is the final product of herself (or divine self).

All in all, the process of creation shapes the creator as much as the creator shapes the creation. So know in advance that you will be transformed through the manifestation of your ideas for the final product of all creation is you at your full potential.

Inspired by HC

Onyx, Vanilla Ice, Baha Men, Skee-Lo…Remember them? How about their songs “Slam”, “Ice Baby”, “Who Let the Dogs Out”, and “I Wish”? Probably so. Nonetheless, these musicians are typically categorized as one-hit wonders. They are victims of the belief in product over process.

They are not alone; this belief transcends many industries. In his book “Built to Last”, Jim Collins compares good versus great companies and argues that great companies focus on developing the process that creates the great products as opposed to hoping for a great product to sprout up. As physic students, we were taught to memorize Newton’s laws of motion, when in fact it would be more fruitful for us to contemplate Newton’s thought processes that eventually lead to these three understandings so that we could find the 4th and 5th laws! As fans, we oftentimes become enamored by the performance of athletes when in fact, their real world performance is simply the product of how they practiced (a process of simulating the real world).

Process over product is no different than teaching a man how to fish rather than giving him a fish. What are your physical and mental processes, habits, routines, and/or rituals? How are they helping you or hurting you on your quest to realize your full potential? No one has a patent on the best process; you have to find or create a sequence of processes that work together to produce the best you.

Live purposefully!

Procreation and reproduction are not the same though we often think of them as synonymous. Reproduction is only physical and biological. It is about producing offspring.

Procreation includes, but is not restricted to, producing offspring. Procreation is about living and leaving a legacy and taking responsibility for our world by advancing it to a higher (physical and mental) state than it was when we inherited it. The etymology of the prefix “pro” = on behalf of; in favor of. So lets live in favor of creation; we should all have the freedom to create more good.

Some people leave behind art, music, architecture, and writings

Some people leave behind institutions, endowments, businesses, and organizations

Some people don’t leave anything material

Some people just leave memories of faith, hope, and love.

Live purposefully!

Inspired by: Mike