“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Winding down the first half of the 2018 season of CreativeBoost, much of what I’ve been sharing with you has involved talking about those essential things we cannot see but that are vital to growth, including our work as creative pros.
My focus so far has been on one of my three words for the year : threshold. It’s a word that has a curious history, but much of it is borrowed from the verb “to thrash,” which in at least one sense involves separating what you need from what you don’t.
Knowing what to leave out—and to let go of—is more than just good editorial advice. It’s a roadmap for life.
I remind myself of this—because so much of this newsletter continues to serve as a travelogue and letter to myself—when I talk about being wary of judgement and to not be swayed too quickly by my beliefs. Expectations are just as hazardous.
That threshold I keep talking about is more than just a matter of letting go of the past and all of the stories we tell ourselves about it. Rather, it’s about a kind of crossing into a different way of thinking about and solving our problems.
I also talked about how we can do a better job of dealing with difficult people and to recognize there are three forces that keep us in unhappy situations.
In all things, it’s so important to keep seeking that sense of agency we each have within ourselves to build deliberately the life of our own choosing. That agency is not something we can see. But you know it when you find it.
To get there, keep following Marshall Rosenberg’s wise advice: “Practice translating judgement into an unmet need.”
