It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that limiting beliefs are, well… limiting. Duh, right?

Well, they’re not just limiting. They ruin lives. They keep us from being authentic and living the way we really want to live.

There are many times where I’ve wanted to say something, tell someone how I really feel. But I hold back. Why? Because I’m afraid of how they’ll respond. I’m afraid they’ll think I’m weird. What’s worse, is they might have similar beliefs. That could make things even more uncomfortable. So I keep my mouth shut. I stay quiet and try to forget about whatever it was that I really wanted to say. Or I just say something expected, something safe. And I feel like a little bit of my soul is repressed.

A more specific example is with my music. I play drums, djembe to be specific. I’ve always wanted to be a musician, and I’ve always liked rhythm. (Just ask my wife how much I tap on things.) For the longest time, I thought I didn’t have any rhythm. I thought because I was a white boy, it would be really hard for me to play the drums (white boys supposedly can’t dance, so why should they have any rhythm?). Anyway, I had all these limiting beliefs about what it was I could and couldn’t do and it held me back. I would practice and practice but I would still fumble and be off-beat. It wasn’t until I let go of my limiting beliefs about whether or not I had rhythm, that I started to really improve my playing.

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His mind was sharp, but his vision was blurred.  He could think, but could not talk.  He wanted to write, but could not use his hands.  With one eye sewn shut, his only means of communication was by blinking his left eye.  Yet with all his obstacles and challenges, he was able to ”write” a bestselling book that was turned into a movie.  Who am I talking about?  Jean-Dominique Bauby the author of “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”.

There are stories that entertain, stores that scare, and stories that motivate.  This is a story of motivation, perseverance and accomplishment in the face of adversity and debilitating paralysis. Every now and then you come across a story so powerful and compelling, that it grabs you by the throat and just won’t let go.   Such is the nature of the true story of Jean- Dominique Bauby – locked in his body as one is in entombed in a diving bell, yet free to wander, dream and travel to faraway places using only his mind.

Jean-Dominique was the editor of the French ELLE magazine and lived a fast pace life in the world of fashion. Then on one day in 1995 he had a massive stroke that left him completely immobile except for the movement of his left eye.  Unfortunately he was the victim of a extremely rare condition called Locked-in Syndrome.  Now, just take a moment to absorb Jean-Dominique’s condition – you’re mind is perfectly fine, you feel pain, hot and cold, a bead of sweat rolling down your forehead, but the only thing you can move is your left eye.  How would you react?  Would you be able to turn your condition into something positive?

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For years, I had heard that in Chinese, the word for crisis is the same as the word for opportunity. Recently I learned that the more popular story is that the Chinese word for crisis consists of two characters: one meaning danger, and one meaning opportunity. Both stories are interesting, but neither is true. While there’s some disagreement, there is little evidence to suggest that the word for crisis was derived in such a way.

But etymology aside, a crisis and an opportunity really aren’t that different, are they? Each is a critical point at which events will turn for the better or for the worse. A mishandled opportunity become a crisis, and a well-managed crisis becomes an opportunity. The most important factor is not the challenge itself, but how you handle it.

Everyone knows that the U.S. is in the middle of a huge financial meltdown. But the events are what they are, and worrying about things won’t change them. So you can either address the situation as a crisis or as an opportunity.

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“I did not discover relativity by rational thinking alone.” – Albert Einstein

Image courtesy of Alicepopkorn

Creativity is the vehicle by which we achieve much in life. We are often creative when we resolve business negotiations, when we solve problems, when we somehow organize a group of friends to all meet together for a night out, when we cook a meal and when we experience new spiritual insights. Creativity can be a great source of joy for us. It opens up new possibilities and allows us to make sudden leaps in many different aspects of our lives.

Creativity extends far beyond limited disciplines such as the fine arts of drawing, painting, sculpting, literature and music. To limit one’s notion of creativity would in itself be decidedly uncreative. The scope of creative activity is practically infinite.

What is Creativity?

Creativity can be defined as the discovery of new meaning or a new context of thinking. Notice how this definition is purely non-material. Creativity is something that happens within consciousness and only afterwards does the product of creativity eventually become manifest in material reality. As conscious human beings we are each potentially powerful forces of creation.

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