Monthly Archives: January 2010

The hunger to make a difference

Was browsing latest tweets and came across this gem from Hugh at Gapinvoid, simply can’t wait for his next book. Chapter 2 is a stroke of genius  in that it puts words around this feeling that drives me, and I’m sure not only me, but creatives the world over – and makes us vacillate between utter highs and deep lows, when we feel things are coming together and life at last has a purpose, only to be thrown into the doldrums the next moment when all the hard work seems in vain.

hunger333.jpg

The Hun­ger to do something crea­tive.

The Hun­ger to do something ama­zing.

The Hun­ger to change the world.

The Hun­ger to make a dif­fe­rence.

The Hun­ger to enjoy one’s work.

The Hun­ger to be able to look back and say, Yeah, cool, I did that.

The Hun­ger to make the most of this utterly brief blip of time Crea­tion has given us.

The Hun­ger to dream the good dreams.

The Hun­ger to have ama­zing peo­ple in our lives.

The Hun­ger to have the synap­ses con­ti­nually fired up on over­drive.

The Hun­ger to expe­rience beauty.

The Hun­ger to tell the truth.

The Hun­ger to be part of something big­ger than your­self.

The Hun­ger to have good sto­ries to tell.

The Hun­ger to stay the course, des­pite of the odds.

The Hun­ger to feel pas­sion.

The Hun­ger to know and express Love.

The Hun­ger to know and express Joy.

The Hun­ger to chan­nel The Divine.

The Hun­ger to actually feel alive.

The Hun­ger will give you everything. And it will take from you, everything. It will cost you your life, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

But kno­wing this, of course, is what ulti­ma­tely sets you free.

I apologize in advance to Hugh for quoting this in its entirety – it’s simply so well written, like a poem – that cutting it off in the middle would be a travesty to the meaning and significance it conveys.

It also made me think of the conflict I have felt part of myself since more or less forever, the two worlds that are at times hard to reconcile and when opportunities arise to do it, the pleasure is veritable. At the heart of is the curious combination of an artist and sculptor whose driving passion is to change the world, remind us of the meaning and beauty (my dad) and the ballet dancer – turned entrepreneur, who built up the business around my dad’s jewellery design (my mum). A curious combination of extremes in one sense and the pursuit of beauty, purpose and meaning on the other and the background to my own relentless pursuit of growth through play, learning, creativity and innovation. All driven by the Hunger that arises from the conflict between those two worlds.

Women, success and charisma – worlds that seldom meet?

On the plane back from Billund on Wednesday night I was browsing the Harvard Business Review and came across an excellent article by Alex Pentland, from the MIT Media Lab, who has figured out how to measure the power of charisma. The finding is that apparently it is not what you say, it is how you say it. According to Pentland it is possible to predict which executives will win a business competition solely on the basis of the social signals they send.

Apparently more successful people are more energetic. They talk more, but they also listen more. They spend more face-to-face time with others and pick up cues from them, draw people out, and get them to be more outgoing. According to Pentland, it is not just what they project that makes them charismatic; it’s what they elicit. The more of these energetic, positive people you put on a team, the better the team’s performance. More details in his book Honest Signals (MIT Press 2008).

Anoher piece of interesting writing I came across just now. A debate is going on over at Clay Shirky’s blog about the fact that women are rubbish at promoting themselves like men normally do. We hate making self-aggrandising comments, or telling people we are brilliant – instead we hope others will recommend our work rather than promoting it ourselves. This apparently, is one reason why we women are less successful in business.

Reading the blog post, I cannot help but agree. Bragging about myself makes me cringe, it sounds wrong and somehow as I’m pretty energetic as it is, makes me feel entirely fake and horrible. Coming from my native Finland the idea of this kind of bull**** just makes me cringe. Surely Pentland’s research proves that in actual fact we can be successful and not have to be egos on sticks?

The sound of an idea

Is there a sound to the moment when you get the best ideas? Is it the proverbial ‘PING’, which to me sounds like a microwave oven just finished it’s defrosting cycle..so maybe something else?? Perhaps it is the sound of two bricks clicking together? This just made me smile so have to share it with you