Edit Your Life

Anyone who is looking to live a happier, more meaningful life needs to watch “Less Stuff, More Happiness,” a TED talk about life editing by author and designer Graham Hill.

Hill’s central message — that by owning and storing less stuff, we can save money, decrease our environmental impact and be less stressed— is  a hard one to refute. One might quickly acknowledge the need to shed some items here or there (whether it’s by annual spring cleaning or the once-a-decade garage sale), but Hill challenges progressive consumers to “clear the arteries” of their lives, with the promise that they will have more freedom, more time, less debt and therefore less stress when the downsizing is done. The author’s 420-square-foot home/office is and multifunctional by design — a bed becomes a couch, a side table becomes a dining area for ten — and his how-to bullet points are concise as well:

1) Edit ruthlessly (think before you buy and trim the fat from our personal inventories).

2) Think small (small is sexy; buy things that nest, stack and can be digitized).

3) Make it Multifunctional.  He showed a sink that was combined with a toilet (uh, yuck), but also a dining table that expanded into a bed.

The author emphasized that life editing is “the most important skill of our century”, and that by doing so we can “make room for the good stuff”.

Watch the full talk below. For more on Hill and his Life Edited project, click here.

Making Mistakes Into Masterpieces

Being flawed is easy. It comes to us naturally.  We all make mistakes. We’re human.

Yet mistakes are necessary and productive in our lives. The more we allow ourselves to make mistakes (and to learn from them), the faster our characters grow.  For my third group session at Synergy’s Youth Resiliency Center we worked together to turn mistakes into masterpieces.

Let me explain.

Each participant was given a blank piece of paper and instructed to draw an irregular shape on it — no hearts, or perfect circles or squares — something that is nothing; a mistake. Then we traded papers, passing  them to our left. I asked the kids to add their own touch to the shape (make it an alien, a monster, or whatever). Every time the one-minute timer went off, we passed again to our left.  We eventually worked all the way around the studio, until everyone had their original paper back — their “mistakes” now transformed into pieces of art. Some shapes had tentacles added, while others grew extra heads or eyes. Some looked like Picasso –some looked more like Picante sauce — but they were all changed for the better. The odd, irregular shapes were gone. Now there was an extraterrestrial. Now there was a fantasy creature, the (ahem) “Uni-Horse-Dog”. Maybe the finished products were not masterpieces per se, but now they represented ideas, thought,  and creation instead of being erratic marks or meaningless blobs on paper.

What if we allowed God to turn our mistakes into masterpieces? What if we allowed others into our struggles and leaned on our communities to help us heal? What if we treated our misunderstandings the way we used to as children — as teachable moments? What if we allowed our failures to become something unexpectedly beautiful?

To learn more about Synergy’s YRC, click here. To view my posts about my first and second visits, click here or here.

     

Definitive Creativity

James A. Pearson recently wrote a short essay on his blog about “Definitive Creativity”. It’s not even a full page long, but it gave me plenty to ponder. The premise is that most of us allow ourselves to be defined by what we consume (bands, movies, clothing, food), not by the content we actually create ourselves.

“….when you say you like U2 or Starbucks or TOMS or the local coffee shop, you’re really only telling me about them, about how great they are. But show me something you’ve made and I get to see how great you are.“

Life is certainly easier this way, but as creators we need to push ourselves to be defined by what we create, not what we consume. Pearson’s thoughts are indicting; inspiration with a call to creative action. I love to share the things I’m enjoying — whether its new music, books or a great film — but I want to be a definitive creator, not a definitive consumer. I realize the irony in re-posting these ideas, but they really hit home with me.

Hopefully, the essay will inspire you to create this weekend as well. Read it here.