Whether we like it or not, each of us is constrained by limits on what we can do and feel. To ignore these limits leads to denial and eventually to failure. To achieve excellence, we must first understand the reality of the everyday, with all its demands.
It is how we choose what we do, and how we approach it, that will determine whether the sum of our days adds up to a formless blur, or to something resembling a work of art.
Without respect, the subtle alchemy that binds an organization or that serves as the impetus for a business transaction would dissolve into mutual suspicion and hostility.
When each of these three elements of vision-concern for excellence, for people and for the wider environment-are present, business is transformed from a tool for making profits into a creative, humane experiment for improving life.
If we agree that the bottom line of life is happiness, not success, then it makes perfect sense to say that it is the journey that counts, not reaching the destination.
Attention is psychic energy, and like physical energy, unless we allocate some part of it to the task at hand, no work gets done.
Even without success, creative persons find joy in a job well done. Learning for its own sake is rewarding.
We can either help to make this world a more incredible place than it has ever been, or we can hasten its return to inorganic dust.
Knowing oneself is not so much a question of discovering what is present in one’s self, but rather the creation of who one wants to be.
Studying creativity is not an elite distraction, but provides one of the most exciting models for living.
Many business leaders today view their jobs as entailing responsibility for the welfare of the wider community. These individuals do not define themselves as profit-making machines whose only reason for existing is to satisfy escalating expectation for immediate gain.
Through learning we grow, becoming more than we were before, and in that sense learning is unselfish, because it results in the transformation of what we were before, a setting aside of the old self in favor of a more complex one.
I think that evolution has had a hand in selecting people who had a sense of doing something beyond themselves.
Purpose provides activation energy for living.
In knowledge-intensive business settings, where every manager has to oversee massive amounts of information as well as people, facilitating the use of psychic energy becomes a primary concern.
Creativity is any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one What counts is whether the novelty he or she produces is accepted for inclusion in the domain.
It is as if evolution has built a safety device in our nervous system that allows us to experience full happiness only when we are living at 100%-when we are fully using the physical and mental equipment we have been given.
If there is one word that makes creative people different from others, it is the word complexity. Instead of being an individual, they are a multitude.
Act as if the future of the universe depends on what you do, while laughing at yourself for thinking that your actions make any difference.
Other things equal, a life filled with complex flow activities is more worth living than one spent consuming passive entertainment.