Basically, if you think you’re an expert you’ll continue to do things the way you know how to do them, and may even subtly resist any other way.
This applies to creativity in general.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
Why Disruptive Innovation Requires Looking Beyond the Experts http://bit.ly/2qR9W4S
Everyone feels like this. Even the people who seem blind to their own faults feel like this; they just cover it with arrogance.
Originally shared by Winchell Chung
Neil Gaiman on Impostor Syndrome
Originally shared by Winchell Chung
Via Laura Gibbs. Sharing to read later
Originally shared by Larry Ferlazzo
There are so many stories of heroism from WW II. Terrible times produce great as well as terrible people, I suppose.
Originally shared by Self-Rescuing Princess Society
Sigrid Schultz – the dragon from Chicago
How have I never heard of Sigrid Schultz before? Here was a trailblazing reporter who rose to the position of chief correspondent for Central Europe, making her America’s first woman bureau chief at a foreign desk, and who refused to be silenced by the Nazis at the most dangerous time. I cannot believe that I hadn’t heard of this amazing woman until earlier this week!
She stayed in Germany throughout the 1930s and the lead-up to WW2, filing reports about concentration camps, government assaults on churches and other institutions, telling the truth about increasing persecution of Germany’s Jews, warning about dangerous alliances with other countries, and otherwise trying to convince the world of the atrocities she was witnessing, all while facing both the dangers of being a reporter on the ground and dealing with an uninterested public back home.
I think it’s natural to wonder what we’d do in these kinds of terrible challenges. I sincerely hope I would find the strength to be as fearless as Sigrid Schultz. What a truly remarkable, inspirational woman!
Read more about her life and work: https://selfrescuingprincesssociety.blogspot.com/2017/01/sigrid-schultz-dragon-from-chicago.html
Read about other amazing role models from history: https://selfrescuingprincesssociety.blogspot.com/search/label/role%20models
Support SRPS: https://selfrescuingprincesssociety.blogspot.com/p/srpss.html
I realised last night that writing is good for my mental health.
This is a statement that a lot of writers will find odd, so let me explain.
After a bad retail experience while doing my grocery shopping amid the chaos of Christmas Eve, I felt anxious, and was considering abandoning my plans for the evening. Lately, though, I’ve found that I hold myself to the standards of the characters in my books, and they would definitely have faced the fear and gone ahead; so I did too.
Which is funny, because I’m very aware that the characters in my books are drawn out of elements of myself. So I used a part of myself to motivate myself to be better than I am.
I write noblebright fantasy, which means that my leading characters exhibit courage, perseverance, and kindness to a greater degree than most real people (though certainly there are real people like that). In using them as my model, I’m strengthening the best aspects of myself.
But it doesn’t just work that way. I’ve heard that horror writers are generally extraordinarily nice people, and I suspect that it’s because they draw out the darker parts of themselves into the light, externalise them so that they’re no longer driven by them unawares – and perhaps so that they have a clear model to steer away from, as I have one to steer towards in my more noble characters.
So, in summary: pay attention to the voices in your head. It can improve your mental health.
John Ward speaks wisdom. And so do these comic strips.
Making is, indeed, better than complaining. My first semipro sale was of a story I wrote because I read one and thought it could have been done much better. One of my best books has the same backstory.
Originally shared by John Ward
If you do any type of creative work, please click this link. It will help you. It doesn’t matter if you’re an artist, a writer, a programmer, or a stay-at-home parent trying to figure out some innovative way to get your kids to eat broccoli, the comics posted on the linked webpage will help you flip your point of view and see things in a new light. It’s brilliant, brilliant stuff and deserves to be shared with anyone who struggles with these issues.
Here’s the link:
Neil Gaiman makes books sound metal:
“Books are the way that we communicate with the dead. The way that we learn lessons from those who are no longer with us, that humanity has built on itself, progressed, made knowledge incremental rather than something that has to be relearned, over and over. There are tales that are older than most countries, tales that have long outlasted the cultures and the buildings in which they were first told.”
Roughly one-fifth of the difference between athletes can be put down to practice. That’s still quite a lot, and although the article implies that the remaining four-fifths is probably inherent skill, I can think of other possibilities: quality of training, personal attitude, context (how good you were compared with the people you first competed against)…
We can’t just map this straight on to creative pursuits, either. I think there probably is a talent component, but how large it is… that’s another question.
Originally shared by Art Markman
A research-based approach to dealing with cravings by letting them go past rather than trying to “turn them off” – either by an act of will or by giving in to them. Basically, it’s about creating a space between the thought/feeling and the action, and being OK with pausing in that space.
This is very similar to the “welcoming practice” that I’ve used to deal with powerful feelings.